Though rather beyond the “mezzo” marker “nel cammin di nostra vita,” I’ve been belatedly introduced by a friend to the writings of E.B. White, in particular, his classic, One Man’s Meat, which chronicles with unerring eye and limpid prose his four years writing and tending a farm in Maine.

In the “Introduction” to the fortieth anniversary edition, White writes of his translocation:

Sometime in the winter of 1938, or even before that, I became restless. I felt unhappy and cooped up. More and more my thoughts turned to Maine, where we owned a house with a barn attached. I don’t recall being disenchanted with New York — I loved New York. I was certainly not disenchanted with The New Yorker — I loved the magazine. If I was disenchanted at all, I was probably disenchanted with me. For one thing I suspected that I was not writing quite the way I wanted to write, and sometimes I was oppressed by my weekly deadline. For another, as a commentator, I was stuck with the editorial “we,” a weasel word suggestive of corporate profundity or institutional consensus. I wanted to write as straight as possible, with no fuzziness.

The various essays celebrate, without a touch of sentimentality, the rigors and joys of farm life, the seasons of nature, the communal pleasures of a pre-tv age (though things to come were ominously trumpeted at the 1939 World’s Fair). But, given the period in which they were written (1938-1943), world events cast an ever-darkening shadow. Here are White’s musings on a book he read in late 1940: The Wave of the Future, by Anne Lindbergh. Making every effort to be fair and generous, White nonetheless feels compelled to denounce the fuzziness of style and thought that mar the book:

the book had a double fascination for me, because it contains so many small and rather attractive truths that all add up to make one big fallacy, and to a writer that is always a fascinating performance. And even after all my conclusions I do not believe that Mrs Lindbergh is any more fascist-minded than I am, or that she wants a different sort of world, or that she is a defeatist; but I think instead that she is a poetical and liberal and talented person troubled in her mind (as anybody is today) and trying to write her way into the clear. But although her first two books contained some of the best stuff and some of the best reporting I have ever read, this one reminded me of what Somerset Maugham wrote in The Summing Up: “…there is a sort of magic in the written word. The idea acquires substance by taking on a visible nature, and then stands in the way of its own clarification.”

The new Roland Joffé film, “There Be Dragons,” about Opus Dei founder Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer opened today and didn’t receive the best of reviews: Entertainment Weekly (EW to you) gave it a C+, and the New York Times review wasn’t much better. (Then again, “Thor” got hammered. Call the Heathen League for Irreligious and Civil Rights.)

“There Be Dragons” did give many of us in the trade a chance to write about the evolution of Opus Dei, among other things (as I tried to do in today’s Wall Street Journal), and Joffé’s many interviews on the film were perhaps more profound than the movie itself. (This “wobbly agnostic” directed “The Mission” and is drawn to spiritual topics. Read his Q&A with Dan Burke of Religion News Service.)

Lest you think the bad review of “The Be Dragons” is further proof of the congenital perfidy of The New York Times when it comes to things Catholic, there was a small review of another movie, “Vito Bonafacci,” which I’d never heard of and which seems unlikely to get much notice. Perhaps it deserves better. The review in toto:

Between Hollywood’s reliable mining of the exorcism vein (as in “The Rite”) and its coming appreciation of the vampire-slaying action hero in “Priest,” recent studio releases suggest that men of the cloth are needed only to deal with the supernaturally horrific. So “Vito Bonafacci,” an earnest film about a lapsed Roman Catholic in spiritual crisis, is a welcome reminder of religion’s true work.

A first feature written and directed by John Martoccia, this simple film tells an age-old tale. The title character (played by Paul Borghese) is a well-off contractor shaken by a nightmare in which he dies of a heart attack, and his dead mother tells him that his pursuit of “money, power, status and pleasure” had led him astray and that he should have stayed close to “the one true living God.”

The film follows Vito through his day as he asks his wife and employees if he is a good man, whether they believe in heaven and hell, what role the church plays in their lives. In flashback, he recalls lessons about the rosary from earlier Catholic teachers. By the evening, he has reached out to his local priest, who comes to his mansion, takes his confession, even celebrates Communion. Vito is renewed, more certain of his faith and fate.

Effectively a tutorial on some basic Catholic rituals, this isn’t a great film — too many scenes are static or clumsily acted — but it is elevated by the touches of neorealist style in its small-bore focus and its soundtrack of classical compositions and Italian music from the 12th and 13th centuries. In a world fixated on bombast, “Vito Bonafacci” offers a quiet haven for meaningful meditation.

Let anyone who sees it weigh in.

(Being a continuation of Part 1 and Part 2 of the story of Paul, a young boy living on the Irish West Side of Chicago during the Time of the Great Vatican Council.)

The following weekend found Paul still in a panic about what to do about the relic.  At school that week he had been so distracted that the nun had had to punish him just to get his attention.  At home, he just moped around, hardly eating, and mostly staying in his room.

—He’s turning into his mother, said his mother.

Everyone around him assumed that this was because of the attack on Halloween night and the breaking of Julia’s antique crozier.  But Julia, in fact, had already forgiven him.

—Poor Pauli, God bless him, Julia said to Grandma Jane over a dinner of spaghetti, green beans, Italian bread, and a gallon jug of red table wine that Julia always kept on the kitchen table but that Grandma Jane never touched, because her secret shame was that she was a beer drinker, and then only a single can on the hottest summer day, and only then if she had done something that day that she could be proud of.

—I told Pauli that he was lucky; that it was the Hand of God that that thing broke like that when he was attacked.  A good Sicilian crozier is built to be able to cut a grown man in two.  Good thing it was so old.  I’ll have my nephew Mikey fix it.

Grandma Jane had hoped she would elaborate on the cutting a grown man in two part, but she didn’t.

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Only New Yorkers could care about this, so the rest of you don’t have to read it. Tony Kushner, award-winning playwright, etc., was voted unworthy by CUNY to receive an honorary degree because his views on Israel were said to be unacceptable to one of the board members. The rest of the board voted to table his nomination thus killing it. Another flap in the Big Apple?

Jim Dwyer, indefatigable NYTimes columnist called up Jeffrey Wiesenfeld the complainant in the case who revealed that he is a political hack who didn’t really expect the board to vote with him–probably another bunch of hacks.

Outrage has ensued and everyone who is anyone is returning their honorary degrees to CUNY.

Stephen Walt has weighed in raising the metaphysical level of the controversy to international proportions.

Thank goodness everything has returned to normal–at least in NYC.

UPDATE: Let’s have a re-do: “Under mounting pressure, the City University of New York board of trustees moved on Friday to reverse its decision earlier this week to withhold an honorary degree from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner because of one trustee’s concerns about Mr. Kushner’s views regarding Israel.”

May 9 Update: More redo by Clyde Haberman …”Then there is a fundamental question that Mr. Schmidt and his colleagues have yet to answer: If free expression is such a “bedrock” principle, how come it didn’t occur to any of them to make that point while Mr. Wiesenfeld was holding forth on Mr. Kushner — with statements, by the way, that the playwright has called utter distortions of his views on Israel?”    BUT is it a bedrock principle of universities? There’s a good question.

Au contraire: Stanley Fish says  it may have been a dumb decision but it was not a violation of acadmeic freedom.

The revelation that Osama Bin Laden was not hiding in a cave somewhere, but in fact living in a quiet Pakistani resort town, reminded me of one of my very favorite Monty Python sketches: the story of Mr. Hilter and his companions and their adventures in Minehead, Somerset.

I can’t find an embeddable version, but it’s worth going to YouTube to watch if you haven’t seen it. I think my favorite part is “Heinrich Bimmler”‘s autobiographical monologue: “I am retired window cleaner and pacificist without doing war crimes.” This is about how I imagine things went in Abbottabad until this week.

NCR reports on a May 2 meeting on Catholic blogging sponsored by the pontifical councils for culture and for social communications. 150 folks were chosen to attend, including such well-known players in the Catholic blogosphere as Rocco Palmo (Whispers in the Loggia,) Elizabeth Scalia (The Anchoress,) and Hillary White (Orwell’s Picnic.)

I don’t know if dotCommonweal was among the elect at the gathering or not, but we were at least there “in spirit.” The Anchoress delivered a talk that included this gem:

Let’s face it, when the ego is ignited and the passions are galloping, we all too easily ignore our own better angels, and sacrifice charity for the satisfaction of a what we consider to be a well-deserved jab at some poor misguided other.
Need I say, I go to confession a lot more frequently since I have been blogging. Bless me father, for I have sinned…it’s that damned editor at Commonweal, again…

But further, she made the case for the significance of the blogs in the life of the Church:

The church needs us, to assist in evangelization; she needs us to disseminate information and especially to correct information which can often become distorted in the press….The church needs us to be where the sheep are grazing, so that we may help them find the better pastures.

So, denizens of the blogosphere, whaddya think? What’s the role of the myriad Catholic blogs–including our own, prize-winning dotCommonweal–in the service of the faith and the life of the Church?

When a bishop pleads guilty to possessing child pornography, as did the former bishop of Antigonish in Nova Scotia, the Vatican promises to follow canonical procedures and punish him accordingly. But what happens when the pope removes bishops for less illegal offenses, such as poor management or raising questions about married and women priests? As Austen Ivereigh points out at In All Things, when a pope wants remove a bishop who admits to a grave canonical crime, there are procedures to follow. But when he wants to sack a bishop who hasn’t broken any canon laws, the situation gets a bit murkier. Ivereigh writes:

Yet it seems odd that a bishop convicted and admitting guilty to possession of child pornography should be subjected to a careful canonical process, whereas bishops guilty of mismanagement and doctrinal laxity should be summarily dismissed….

Obviously laicization is far more serious than removal from active ministry–even from episcopal office; and canon law rightly places safeguards. But still, in the case of the Australian and the Congolese bishops, isn’t at least an official explanation due?

The answer is yes. But I’m not holding my breath.

At “In All Things,” the America magazine blog, Jim Keane notes the passing this week of another notorious figure:

Rene Emilio Ponce, blamed for slaying of priests, dies at 64

Reporting from San Salvador and Mexico City— Rene Emilio Ponce, the once-powerful army general blamed for one of the most egregious atrocities in El Salvador’s civil war, the killing of six Roman Catholic priests, has died. He was 64.

Ponce died Monday at the Military Hospital in San Salvador, the capital, after being admitted last week in critical condition with heart trouble, El Salvador’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Ponce served as defense minister and army chief of staff in the last half of the Cold War-era conflict that ended in 1992, becoming one of the U.S.-backed government’s most important military strategists.

A United Nations truth commission after the war determined that Ponce had ordered the assassination of the country’s leading Jesuit priest, Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of the Jesuit-run University of Central America. Ellacuria, suspected by the army of supporting leftist guerrillas, was slain on Nov. 16, 1989, along with five other priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter because the orders instructed that no witnesses be left behind, the commission said.

The LA Times obit notes that “For most of the bitter, 12-year war, in which more than 75,000 people were killed in Central America’s smallest country, Ponce enjoyed the support of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations even though — declassified diplomatic cables later revealed — U.S. officials were aware of his abysmal human rights record.”

This too, should not be passed over in silence.

…or I mean narrative…? maybe–make that an account?

As matters have developed since Sunday (make that, early Monday Pakistan time), many details of the invasion/assault/capture/shoot-out/ of you-know-who have shifted. So “stuff happens,” and U.S. Seals (24, 70, or 200 of them) are probably still being debriefed, or shooting the breeze, or whatever. And it appears several congressional types on various intelligence committees don’t know intelligence when they pronounce on it (talk about the ISI!!).

Maybe the deconstructed, post-modernist, rhetoric specialists among us can explain the difference between a story, a narrative, an account–all phrases in wide use in the paper of record and on the Newshour to describe events/facts/appearances/phantasms  of the past five days (or is it six?).

Commonweal has long been a go-to place for intelligent criticism of books, movies, and plays. But what about cultural phenomena that don’t fit neatly into any of those categories? What about publicity stunts, celebrity exhibitionism, and sham ceremony? With the addition of our new cultural critic Grace van Cutsem, we’ll have that stuff covered too. Grace will be writing for us about the press conferences of Steve Jobs, Lebron James, and Donald Trump; Justin Bieber concerts; and, of course, royal weddings.

Last weekend, the Associated Church Press announced the winners of the Best of the Christian Press Awards. We took home a few:

• First place in the general-interest-magazine category
• Third place in the blog category
• First place in the long-feature-article category (Peter Steinfels’s “Further Adrift”)
• First place for in the critical-review category (Peter Steinfels’s “A Bricklayer’s Son”)
• Second place in the humor category (Alice McDermott’s “Revelation”)
• Second place in the Web-site category

Thanks to the judges, and congratulations to all the winners [PDF].

Timing is everything, they say, and Civil War historian and Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust certainly enjoyed auspicious timing when she delivered the 2011 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities on Monday night at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Jefferson Lecture is the federal government’s most prestigious award for intellectual accomplishment in the humanities.

Faust’s theme, elaborated as the airwaves were full of nothing but the operation to take out bin Laden, was on humanity’s fascination with war narratives. As recounted by the Chronicle of Higher Ed story:

“When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it was influenced in no small part by the desire—even need—to transform the uncertainty of combating a terrorist enemy into a conflict that could provide a purposeful, coherent, and understandable structure, a comprehensible narrative,” Ms. Faust said. “We expect wars to come with endings; that is part of their story. The language of war made Americans protagonists in a story they understood rather than the victims or potential victims of forces beyond their comprehension and control.”

Ms. Faust traced what she called “the seductiveness of war” to its location on the “boundary of the human, the inhuman, and the superhuman,” and the possibility it offers of transcending “the gray everyday” of life. “Stories of war are infused with the aura of the consequential.”

That argument is sobering given that it leads us to fixate on, and exalt, conflicts, be they on battlefields, blogs, courtrooms or playing fields. (Or on miracles, as when the Peruvian president claimed bin Laden’s death was a miracle that should be credited to newly-Blessed John Paul II.)

But Faust’s argument certainly rings true to me, both at a visceral level and as I watch the coverage of the bin Laden story as well as the prognostications about the political boost–or not–that this episode might give President Obama. Polls show Obama getting a predictable bounce, though I tend to be among those who believe that will wear off quickly and by next year the story will be so last year and of little consequence in the election.

But maybe it will have an impact. Andrew Sullivan wondered how bin Laden’s death could not be a defining moment for the Obama presidency, as he ticked off his many other accomplishments: rescuing the economy, passing health care, promoting gay rights and a host of other genuine victories. Yet those triumphs were in the gray area of legislation and process and politics, areas of compromise and no clear winners, and long-term outcomes. Nothing as clear and satisfying as the death of bin Laden, and no victory that couldn’t be recast by political opponents. Obama’s earlier middling approval numbers reflected that dynamic, I think.

Will our romance with battlefield heroics prove of greater consequence than congressional battles, such as the one over health care, that are of arguably greater import?

Juan Cole offers this assessment of bin Laden death myths so far.

Jim Sleeper, “Why I’m Not Gloating.”

Something else to chew on: Senate official: “Wrong to link bin Laden, Geronimo.”

Not a bit of it. He was undeniably charismatic. The sort of man you’d have noticed no matter what he was wearing, with or without the patriarchal beard. A devout Muslim (not a good one), he never claimed to be a prophet, but to us he seemed to play the part, and he definitely looked it. No one doubted his sincerity or claimed that his monstrous zeal, hateful as it was, disguised a shabbier vice. There was nothing shabby about him. He was grand, mysterious; not pure evil, perhaps, but pure and evil at the same time.

Now that he’s dead, Al Qaeda appears to be what it was all along: just another terrorist organization, distinguished only by the scale of its success, not by the unique nature of its motivations. Its grievances are no more metaphysical, and no less historical, than those of the IRA (for example). Osama bin Laden’s death robs his movement of its satanic glamour. So long as we had his face to look at, we could imagine, as his followers did, that the conflict was between innocence and absolute evil. For them, it was martyrs versus decadent kafirs; for us, tolerant, life-affirming moderns versus primitive, self-loathing nihilists. Now we’re back where we started, left with politics and the failure of politics, our desire for security and peace (in that order) and their desperate rage. There can be no excuse for what they’ve done, or what they’re still trying to do. But terrorists are no exception to the rule: everyone has his reasons. Knowing that Al Qaeda’s reasons must be bad ones because of their effects is no substitute for knowing what they are.

Subway preachers are a dime a dozen in New York. They seem especially numerous on the 7th Ave. line–the one most Commonweal staffers take to work. There’s the elderly Israeli man with the wild beard who promises a path to the pearly gates. The middle-aged Jamaican woman who preaches the peace of Christ in surprisingly aggressive tones. The thirty-something African-American man who delivers fire and brimstone to annoyed commuters. Usually I can tune them out. But when a particularly noisy one starts his routine and pulls my focus, I’ll move to another car.

I ran into one of those today. “Good morning!” the bearded man bellowed. He had the accent of a native Spanish-speaker, glasses, and he gesticulated with a file folder marked “2009.” Here we go again. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask for money.” That’s when I stood and headed for the door. “I do have a job,” he continued. “At least for the time being.” The doors opened. “My name is Austerity Nut and I preach the virtues of budget cuts.” I sat back down. Here’s what he said:

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In New York the people most affected by 9/11 were the first responders but equally affected were the people who lived there. Many of them returned to their homes in Battery Park City as soon as they could. Some of them, our grandson for one, have lived there all their lives.  Yesterday, the local news paper asked people for their response to the news of OBL’s death. Here are some of the heartening and sobering comments.  http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=gxn46jcab&v=001e4MTcRpscGrmYTMZ_3J6xTYEOJPEVekizhaIEsTGXANlPfRQMje8ECW6O5ySL4fRM9k39amEIowYF9DdPyC8VYcNzEadEyKjy5xWPbofcHgr1fxMKuVWOCXLtUia1LOy

From at least some of the accounts I’ve been reading, it sounds at least possible that OBL may have been summarily executed.  [UPDATE:  Reuters is reporting that the SEAL team was under orders to kill, not capture, OBL.]  Politically, I can see the reasons for doing that, since having him as a prisoner would have been a nightmare for the U.S. government.   And I have little doubt  that he would have been eligible for — and received — the death penalty after a trial.  Understanding that we can’t know all the facts and likely never will, I’m curious what readers think about the morality of that.  The Catholic view of the death penalty allows for its use in exceptional circumstances.  Here’s what the Catechism says:

Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”

Is OBL one of these rare circumstances where the death penalty would be permissible?  If he were, does the absence of any adjudicative process affect your evaluation?   My own view is that he would fit within the exception — there’s no factual question concerning his culpability for the killing of thousands of innocent people nor of his intention to continue sponsoring such killings in the future, and he would seem to be nearly as much a danger in prison as at large, though this last point is probably debatable — but I’m curious what you think.

Links worth reading:

Chait’s take: Bin Laden’s death may make Al Qaeda sympathizers think twice about opposing the United States. The operation raises American confidence in its military. And this won’t move the needle for Obama come November.

Steve Kornacki agrees.

TPM: how it happened.

New York Times coverage: the endless obit; a roundup of events and reactions; analysis of how this complicates our already complicated relationship with Pakistan.

Comments open; feel free to share other articles; discuss.

Take a look at this interesting analysis of the origins of our current debt problems by the Washington Post (HT John Cole).  Here’s a taste:

Polls show that a large majority of Americans blame wasteful or unnecessary federal programs for the nation’s budget problems. But routine increases in defense and domestic spending account for only about 15 percent of the financial deterioration, according to a new analysis of CBO data.

The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts. Together, the economy and the tax bills enacted under former president George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent by President Obama, wiped out $6.3 trillion in anticipated revenue. That’s nearly half of the $12.7 trillion swing from projected surpluses to real debt. Federal tax collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years.

Big-ticket spending initiated by the Bush administration accounts for 12 percent of the shift. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have added $1.3 trillion in new borrowing. A new prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients contributed another $272 billion. The Troubled Assets Relief Program bank bailout, which infuriated voters and led to the defeat of several legislators in 2010, added just $16 billion — and TARP may eventually cost nothing as financial institutions repay the Treasury.

Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus, a favorite target of Republicans who blame Democrats for the mounting debt, has added $719 billion — 6 percent of the total shift, according to the new analysis of CBO data by the nonprofit Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative. All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt, according to a separate Washington Post analysis of CBO data over the past decade. Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate.

Given this analysis, how can someone who is serious about reducing the debt (in a way that takes seriously our obligations to consider first the impact of our policies on the poorest among us) think that the right approach is to further cut taxes on the rich and on corporations and then to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid?  The most charitable interpretation of the Ryan plan is that it is based on such a blind adherence to discredited supply-side ideas that Ryan actually believes that the plan is the best way to help the poor over the long run.  A more realistic assessment, in my opinion, is that the plan’s design very straightforwardly reflects the political commitments of Ryan and of his party — shrink government and let the poor fend for themselves in the free market, as Ayn Rand commanded.  Ockham’s Razor, etc.

This past weekend saw a royal wedding and a beatification. Watching bits and pieces of them both, it struck me that the dominant difference between the two was the sense of divine providence operating in them. At the beatification, the notion of God’s providence, of divine call and human response, pervaded the scene. John Paul II was presented as called by God to play a special role in the life of the church and in the world.  Sometimes at great cost, he answered the call with his whole heart.

In contrast, most of the television commentators defended the English monarchy by invoking raw tradition–without its normative underpinnings: “It’s our thing. . . because it’s been our thing for a long time. . .  ” The family and the people that happened to be the major players in the event were depicted as marked by luck, or chance, but were in essence no different from anyone else.  They won (or lost, depending upon your perspective) some sort of cosmic lottery.  They were super-celebrities, yes.  More than that , well, no. The underlying religious cosmology –the idea that God has chosen this people, this family, this country for something remarkable–was missing from the coverage. Some hints of it, however, were included in the religious service, including the hymn “Jerusalem,” based on Blake’s poem.

But in Christian Europe, the imagery for the higher clergy and for monarchical rulers was long been intertwined.  Both the papacy and the monarchy saw themselves as institutions founded by God, ruled by those who were specially chosen by God.  In England, in fact, the notion of the “divine right of kings” was highly influential in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:; here is a bit from King James I’s treatise on the topic,which seems over-the-top too us now, but gives a sense of how far things have come in a few hundred years.

The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth; for kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself are called gods. There be three principal similitudes that illustrate the state of monarchy: one taken out of the word of God; and the two other out of the grounds of policy and philosophy. In the Scriptures kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to the divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families: for a king is truly Parens patriae, the politique father of his people. And lastly, kings are compared to the head of this microcosm of the body of man.

Kings are justly called gods, for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth: for if you will consider the attributes to God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king. God hath power to create or destrov make or unmake at his pleasure, to give life or send death, to judge all and to be judged nor accountable to none; to raise low things and to make high things low at his pleasure, and to God are both souls and body due. And the like power have kings: they make and unmake their subjects, thev have power of raising and casting down, of life and of death, judges over all their subjects and in all causes and yet accountable to none but God only. . . .

–from King James I, Works, (1609).

The late Richard Rorty wrote about the “disenchantment” of the world that comes with modernity.  The disenchantment of the English monarchy, I think, leaves in its wake merely super-celebrity.  Celebrity, in fact, seems to be the remnant of providence and vocation in modern Western liberal democracies.

Can the disenchantment of the papacy be far behind?  Some, of course, have argued that Pope John Paul II’s “celebrity” status was a sign of just that. But others disagree. If not, what will prevent it? And if disenchantment is inevitable, does that mean that the only alternative is “celebrity”–even for Popes?