September looks to be a dangerous month in the Middle East–or maybe the start of another dangerous decade.

Peace? The Palestinians continue their plan to go to the UN for recognition. But recognition of what and how? It has never been entirely clear what the Palestinians want from the UN, or what the UN can provide. Alvaro De Soto, a UN diplomat, has provided a short explanation of the possibilities and the process. There are two possibilities, he writes:

“If the idea is to bring the Palestinians up to par with Israel by pushing forward a mirror image of the resolution that led to the creation of Israel, it should be a General Assembly resolution as was the case in 1947. But as a matter of international law, neither the UN nor any other international organization can give legal validity to the creation of a state. The UN is not in the recognition business; only states can recognize states…..”

Or, “If the Palestinians were to pursue UN membership, a different procedure would apply. Ultimately UN membership is granted by the General Assembly if 2/3 of the members present and voting so decide, but the opportunity to take such a decision only arises if the Security Council puts its positive stamp on a membership application. There is no bypass mechanism, no uniting-for peace procedure in case of Council deadlock….The Council votes, with the usual requirements of 9 votes in favor and no permanent members voting against. If it is approved it goes to the General Assembly. If it is not, there will be no General Assembly vote.”

The full (and brief explanation), “What the UN Vote Means and Does Not” was posted by Bernard Avishai at TPM. I found it clarifying.

War? A rumor on which I have posted before, an Israeli attack on Iran, has been floated again by  retired CIA agent, Robert Baer, and reported by MJ Rosenberg. It focuses on retired Mossad officials who believe that Netanyahu will go off the deep end. Baer, who claims to have additional information, says, “There is almost ‘near certainty’ that Netanyahu is ‘planning an attack [on Iran] …and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he’s also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict.” With the CIA one never knows what is being said and to whom. Is this a heads up to the Obama Administration that the CIA is not on board for this–as the Pentagon has signaled since the rumors began? A preemptive move against any Israeli action by the U.S. (via the CIA)? Or a warning to the Palestinians not to go to the UN?  OR?

UPDATE: Palestinians to the General Assembly? Ha’aretz reports that the Palestinian Authority is likely to choose option one (above), and go to the General Assembly and follow the path of Israel in 1947. This will avoid the likelihood of a U.S. veto in the Security Council. The story also reports on US intransigence  in the Quartet talks meant to ameliorate the Palestinian move.

Joe Nocera bewails, in Italianate fashion, the “Fox-ification” of the once great Wall Street Journal. He also confesses his own well-intentioned, but in hindsight, rather naive optimism in the matter.

To tell you the truth, I’m hanging my head in shame too. Four years ago, when Murdoch was battling recalcitrant members of the Bancroft family to gain control of The Journal, which he had long lusted after and which he viewed as the vehicle that would finally allow him to go head-to-head against The New York Times, I wrote several columns saying that he would be a better owner than the Bancrofts.

The Bancrofts’ history of mismanagement had made The Journal vulnerable in the first place. I thought that Murdoch’s resources would stop the financial bleeding, and that his desire for a decent legacy would keep him from destroying a great newspaper.

After the family agreed to sell to him, Elisabeth Goth, the brave Bancroft heir who had long tried to get her family to fix the company, told me, “He has a tremendous opportunity, and I don’t think he’s going to blow it.” In that same column, I wrote, “The chances of Mr. Murdoch wrecking The Journal are lower than you’d think.”

Mea culpa.

Joe’s many admirers will note that, being the liturgically correct guy that he is, he forbears intoning the triple “mea culpa” until its official inauguration with the First Sunday of Advent.

UPDATE:

Giving the Journal its say:

Our readers can decide if we are a better publication than we were four years ago, but there is no denying that News Corp. has invested in the product. The news hole is larger. Our foreign coverage in particular is more robust, our weekend edition more substantial, and our expansion into digital delivery ahead of the pack. The measure that really matters is the market’s, and on that score Mr. Hinton was at the helm when we again became America’s largest daily.

*****

Phone-hacking is deplorable, and we assume the guilty will be prosecuted. More fundamentally, the News of the World’s offense—fatal, as it turned out—was to violate the trust of its readers by not coming about its news honestly. We realize how precious that reader trust is, and our obligation is to re-earn it every day.

The rest is here.

I saw Terrence Malick’s film last evening, spurred in part by Geoffrey O’Brien’s review in The New York Review of Books. O’Brien writes:

The film’s portentous epigraph is the grandest question of all, God’s challenge to Job—”Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”—the ultimate instance of answering a question with a question. Malick has never shied from grandiosity, and in The Tree of Life more than ever before he risks the humorless and overblown. Into what might in other hands have been the small-scale, melancholy tale—too elliptical even to be called a tale—of the not unusually eventful childhood of a boy in Texas, his two brothers, and his father and mother, he has managed to incorporate the creation of the universe, the origins of life on earth, the age of dinosaurs, and the prospect of future dissolution, with musical accompaniment by the powerful tonalities of Berlioz’s Requiem Mass. But he has made an audacious and magnificent film.

Then, celebrating the feast of Saint Bonaventure this morning, I recalled that Bonaventure has a short work of spiritual theology, entitled: “The Tree of Life.” Towards its conclusion he writes:

No one reaches the state of beatitude except through a final union with Him who is the foundation and origin of goods both natural and supernatural, both bodily and spiritual, both temporal and eternal. He it is who says of himself: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End!” As all things are brought forth through the Word eternally uttered, so through the Word made flesh all things are restored, impelled, brought to fulfillment.

I have no idea, of course, whether Malick knows the writings of Bonaventure, though O’Brien reports that he studied philosophy at Harvard and has translated Heidegger. So it’s certainly possible.

In any case, am I right in hearing, during the film’s compelling final scene, the refrain from the “Agnus Dei” of the Berlioz “Requiem:” “Dona eis requiem sempiternam?”

Now at Verdicts, Anthony Domestico on John Banville’s The Infinities.

Banville is such a beautiful stylist that I’m tempted to simply quote some of his most lyrical turns of phrase: a blushing character’s face “is tinged with palest pink, like milk with a drop of wine in it”; an estuary has “sheets of shiny, indigo-tinted mud arrowed all over with the prints of wading birds” (what a strange, wonderful use of the word “arrowed”); a child blows bubbles from a clay pipe, and the bubbles “seemed to be rotating inside themselves, as if the top was always too heavy, and the iridescent surplus kept cascading down the sides.” Banville’s prose is itself an “iridescent surplus”: his physical descriptions offer us shimmering beauty that exceeds what we might expect (and what the plot strictly requires).

Banville’s lyricism is impressive—and, in this case, justified by his choice of narrator, since Hermes is the inventor of the lyre—but its relentlessness runs the risk of alienating the reader. When every page, almost every sentence, contains a gem-like descriptive beauty, surplus can turn into surfeit: we all love ice cream, but few of us would want to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Read the rest here.

Banville was on Charlie Rose last night talking about one of the crime thrillers he’s written under the name Benjamin Black.

Today’s Irish Catholic reports on the newly-released Cloyne report. (HT: NCR.)

The report concludes that “the Church’s own guidelines were “not fully or consistently implemented” in the diocese as recently as 2008.” The focus of the news item is Bishop John Magee, who was found in December of 2008 “by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) to be operating child safeguarding policies that were ‘inadequate and in some respects dangerous’”. He also was known at the time to have embraced and kissed a candidate for priesthood, telling the young man that he loved him.

Wasn’t enough, though–the Irish hierarchy debated whether this meant that Magee should resign. He finally did resign in 2010.

Continuing in this “plus ca change” mode is the report’s conclusion:

In May this year the head of the NBSCCC, Ian Elliott, admitted that he had considered resigning over what he described as a lack of co-operation from senior Church leaders in Ireland to his auditing of dioceses handling of allegations. Bishops had withdrawn from the auditing process citing data protection concerns. However, after assurances were received all dioceses are now co-operating according to the NBSCCC and the body expects to complete the audits in the coming year.

Is there a Philadelphia in Ireland? We’ll see.

Other questions arise for me.
1. First, the bishop’s failure to address sex abuse cases (the report reads: “It is a remarkable fact that Bishop Magee took little or no active interest in the management of clerical child sexual abuse cases until 2008”,) is a different KIND of failure than his inappropriate sexual/romantic overtures to a young man who I infer to be of legal age. Will the two be differentiated in the media hubbub?
2. I find the second–the sexual/romantic stuff–to be an egregious abuse of power over an aspirant to the priesthood. But it is also a sad and tragic reflection of Magee’s inner life. Would you describe such a man (to the extent that we can infer the man from his actions) as having a vocation to celibate life, or is he a man with unrequited sexual/romantic longings who is hiding in the clerical closet? A priest I know reaches out sexually (to adult women,) but will never face within himself the deeper question of vocation, responsibility, and the relationship of sexual acts and overtures to a deep unmet need for intimacy. I can’t help but see Magee in the same light. Part of the cost of mandatory celibacy for the Church is the acting out of men who cannot face their normal human desire for intimacy in a mature way. And if Magee is gay, (he may be straight or bisexual in orientation, and just be looking for sex where he thinks he can get it,) this “intimacy closet” is made darker still by the Church’s harsh anti-gay teaching.
3. Given that Magee was known to have been at least sloppy in handling matters related to sexual abuse until 2008, long after the US Church began its implosion, why was there debate as to whether he should resign? What would it have taken for the other Irish bishops to say “this guy is dangerous to the Church, and should leave”? Archbishop Diarmuid Martin was one of the strong voices in favor of Magee’s resignation, but his voice went unheeded. And how many young men does a bishop get to make passes at before someone–anyone–finds that behavior problematic for a leader of the Church??

The full 400 page report is at http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/Cloyne_Rpt. I just don’t have the heart to read it.

– Scott D. Moringiello writes from Venice on the sinking city’s modern art festival Biennale.

– Anthony Domestico reviews Allegra Goodman’s novel The Cookbook Collector.

– Paul Lakeland looks at The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity and Governance, Accountability and the Future of the Catholic Church.

A bit off the well-trod path, but I found this post by Patrick Lang thought provoking. It takes a look at Virginia’s 7th District, which Cantor “represents.” Looking at the district, Lang asks how well he really represents them, and what are his real political goals.

“Do people in Eric Cantor’s district really want him as their congressman? It seems like a mis-match. Cantor is a very smooth Richmond lawyer type. As the saying goes, “butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.” He is always well spoken and eloquent, well dressed and is well heeled.

“The district is not like that. It stretches from the northern and western exurbs of Richmond far to the northwest through farm country, up through the Piedmont and over the Blue Ridge to include Page County in the Luray arm of the Shenandoah Valley….The district is 80% white. Incomes are modest. The population is mainly people whose ancestors have lived there for a long time. Typically, they live in small, well kept houses sited for a view of the countryside. The houses average around $130,000 in price. This is the heartland of the country of Jefferson’s Virginia yeomen.”

UPDATE:  TPM: “Behind the scenes, leading members of both parties have concluded that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is an impediment to resolving the debt limit standoff, and should back down. Now, Democrats are publicly calling for him to get real or go home.”

UPDATE !!: Glenn Thrush of Politico has this run-down of the debt wreck’s major players, including Cantor, etc. Wonkies will enjoy reading it: “Debt Limit Talks: Reading Their Minds” Tom Stoppard might do justice to this after it’s over and if the world is still solvent.

Jason Berry draws a scathing portrait of Cleveland’s Bishop Richard Lennon in his new book, Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church for closing solvent parishes in Cleveland and, earlier, in Boston when he was an auxiliary bishop. He writes:

Lennon approached Cleveland like a banker redlining loans in poor neighborhoods. As chief executive officer he would follow the trail of prosperity, shift priests to suburban parishes, recapitalize the diocese. Shuttering inner-city churches and historic gems in old enclaves was pragmatism. In Boston he had suppressed wealthy parishes in order to sell churches in plugging a deficit that trailed back to the 1990s, exacerbated by the abuse cases. In Cleveland he would prevent deficits with early, tough chopping-block decisions.

So it is interesting to see that Bishop John M. Smith, bishop-emeritus of Trenton, is to visit the Cleveland diocese in behalf of the Holy See this week to review Lennon’s actions. Bishop Lennon explained it this way in a press release:

“While I am confident that I am faithfully handling the responsibilities entrusted to me, I personally made this request earlier this year because a number of persons have written to Rome expressing their concerns about my leadership of the Diocese. This visit will be an opportunity to gather extensive information on all aspects of the activities of the Diocese and will allow for an objective assessment of my leadership. I ask for prayers that this process will support the vibrancy and vitality of our Diocese going forward.”

Bishop Lennon was not the only one to request a Vatican investigation; according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a local pastor and others did as well. Many are embittered over the plan Lennon announced in 2009 to close 29 of the diocese’s 224 parishes and merge 41 more into others.

Is Bishop Lennon trampling the parishioners’ rights under canon law?

How worried should we be about the national debt? Is the United States really headed the way of Greece and Portugal?

In an article just posted to our home page, the economist Charles Michael Andres Clark argues that the debt panic that has seized much of Washington and the media indicates a profound misunderstanding of some economic basics. Clark, a senior fellow at the Vincentian Center for Church and Society and professor of economics at St. John’s University in New York, addresses four myths about public debt, the first of which is that our federal government is in danger of going bankrupt:

The first and most basic myth is the idea that the U.S. government is about to run out of money. In fact, the U.S. Treasury can’t run out of money because it pays its bills in money it creates. If the federal government owed its debt in Euros or some other currency—or if it had, say, a gold standard, which would limit the government’s ability to create new money—then Ryan and Boehner might be right to warn of bankruptcy. But U.S. debt is owed in U.S. dollars, a sovereign currency that isn’t chained to the value of any commodity. The U.S. government could of course decide not to pay its bills (for example, by refusing to raise the debt ceiling), but it can never lose its ability to pay them. When politicians and journalists say that the United States is in danger of becoming the next Greece, Ireland, or Portugal, they are ignoring the fact that these other countries no longer have a sovereign currency. They must pay their debts in Euros, the supply of which they do not control. They are thus like California, New York, and all the other states facing big budget deficits: they can solve their fiscal problems only by selling bonds or raising taxes. They cannot create more money.

The U.S. government’s situation is more like that of Japan, which faced similar dire warnings a decade ago when its debt-to-GDP ratio reached 100 percent. Now the ratio is over 200 percent (twice ours), and still the Japanese government has no problem finding people to loan it money at low interest. This is because what matters to buyers of Japan’s bonds isn’t the size of the country’s debt but the fact that it has its own currency—and so will never be forced to default.

Clark’s larger point is that politicians should not present the policy options they prefer as if they were necessities rather than options. Just as a country with a sovereign currency can default only by choosing to do so, so a rich country with low taxes that cuts it already-modest welfare provisions is making a choice about its priorities. No brute law of economics requires us to privatize Medicare or reduce Social Security benefits.

Voters deserve to be treated like adults, not children, and this means that politicians shouldn’t say “we can’t” when they really just mean “we don’t want to.” If some members of the House and Senate don’t think the federal government should take care of those who aren’t fully able to take care of themselves—if, say, they believe it’s up to the states or private charity to do this—then let them say so openly instead of presenting their policy preference as a matter of fiscal necessity. Small-government conservatives are now using the national debt as an excuse to cut programs they’ve long wanted to cut, even when the government was running a surplus. When the economy is in good shape, the programs are said to be unnecessary and wasteful: let the thriving private sector take care of whatever problems the public programs were designed to address. And when the economy declines, the same people tell us we can no longer afford such a generous safety net. Whatever ails us, the cure is smaller government.

The biggest economic problems the United States now faces are unemployment, income inequality, and the fact that much of the financial sector still operates like a casino. If the country could solve these problems, the gap between government outlays and government spending would immediately shrink, if not disappear. By instead focusing attention on the country’s debt, politicians are getting it backwards. Contrary to the claim of many leading Republicans on Capitol Hill, there is no reason to think that immediate cuts to government spending will help the economy—or that spending cuts can’t wait until the economy improves.

To commemorate the great founder of Western monasticism, I’ve been reading a splendid new book, by an Irish Benedictine, Gregory Collins. The title is: Meeting Christ in his Mysteries: A Benedictine Vision of the Spiritual Life (Liturgical Press).

Aside from the influence of his own monastic tradition, the author has been deeply influenced by the tradition of Eastern Christianity. He is also keenly knowledgeable about contemporary theology — his footnotes can almost be read on their own as insightful discussions of theologians and issues.

Here is an indication of his intention in writing the book:

My purpose in this book is to show how contemplation of the revealed mysteries, recorded in scripture and celebrated in worship, is capable of generating a mystical spirituality rooted in the church’s liturgy, experienced in the depths of the soul, and flowing out into everyday life. In an authentic vision of Christian mysticism there ought to be no dichotomy between a supposedly “institutional church” (as if the community born of Pentecost could ever be just an institution) and an esoteric “mysticism” (in danger of degenerating into spiritual luxury and self-indulgence) practiced by atomized individuals; nor between communal liturgical celebration and so-called “private” solitary contemplation.

I think the book a fine contribution, for monastics and non-monastics alike, toward furthering Benedict’s goal of establishing a “school of the Lord’s service.”

Take that, Glenn Beck. A new study finds that reading the Bible may help make American Christians more concerned about social justice. David Briggs reports for the Association of Religion Data Archives:

What daily practice may help American Christians become more concerned about issues of poverty, conservation and civil liberties?

Reading the Bible.

The answer may come as a surprise to those locked into viewing religious practices in ideological boxes.  However, a new study by Baylor University researcher Aaron Franzen found frequent Bible reading predicted greater support for issues ranging from the compatibility of science and religion to more humane treatment of criminals.

The study, one of the first to examine the social consequences of reading Scripture, reveals the effects of Bible reading appear to transcend conservative-liberal boundaries.

Thus, even as opposition to same-sex marriage and legalized abortion tends to increase with more time spent with the Bible, so does the number of people who say it is important to actively seek social and economic justice, Franzen found.

The study found that among  Biblical literalists, those who read the Good Book are more concerned about social justice than those who don’t.

At Bernard Dauenhauer’s urging: “Would you or someone start a thread by making a link to Dudley Clendinen, “The Good Short Life” in yesterday’s NYTimes “Sunday Review.” Clendinin suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease. He plans to commit suicide when he finds the suffering unbearable. On the surface, at least, there is something admirable about the “assertive” Stoicism of his way of dealing with his impending death.
How might we who do not accept suicide make a case for our position? Part of whatever the new evangelization is must be finding a way to make a case for our opposition to suicide, even though we recognize the impending future that Clendinen faces.
Generally, it strikes me that if we Catholics are to have a well developed approach to end-of-life issues, we must face up to issues such as who is our God and what does He ask of us when we have to deal with them, either in our own lives or in the lives of people that we care about.”

Here is the link: NYTimes Sunday Review

We prayed for the unemployed today during the prayers of the faithful.  In the wake of Friday’s employment report, the prayer took on greater urgency for me.

It seems likely that we are in for an extended period of slow growth and high unemployment.  Even if job growth were to pick up to something close to the rate seen in other recent recessions it would still take many years for unemployment to fall back to what it was in the latter part of the last decade.

Whether personally unemployed or not, I think all of us have been touched by this crisis in one way or another.   In my small church group, of the five men of working, two were laid off from their jobs.  One, an engineer, has been—except for a brief spate of contract work—unemployed for almost two years.  The other, a software project manager, has found a good contract position, but it is only guaranteed through the end of the year.

I’ve also been reflecting on my own complicity in what is happening to the unemployed.  Four years ago, I was hiring for a position in my department and interviewed a man who had lost his job in the banking industry.  He was a nice guy, eager to show he could manage the change of industry.  In the end, though, I went with a candidate who seemed a better fit.  Two years later, that young man headed off to graduate school and I met with our recruiter again.  She told me that the losing candidate from the last round was still out of work and had been in touch with her.  I’m uncomfortable admitting that his continued unemployment was a “red flag” that was difficult for me to get past.  Intellectually, I knew it wasn’t his fault.  There were so many good applicants out there.  Emotionally, though, I began ranking him lower than some of the new candidates whose resumes I was reviewing.  In the end, I decided not to interview him.

Stories like these are playing out all across the country right now.  When people are unemployed for a long time, their skills begin to atrophy and they become less attractive—for good reasons and bad—to employers.  Long-term unemployment takes a toll on physical and mental health and places families under great stress.  There are roughly 8 million people who have been unemployed for four months or more (financial planners generally urge you have an “emergency fund” that can last three months).  Three million more are only marginally attached to the labor force.

The scale of economic pain certainly calls for a policy response by elected officials.  But it also calls for a ministerial response from the churches.  Church and state should collaborate to meet the material needs of the unemployed.  But there are deeper needs that religious communities are uniquely positioned to address.  In a society where value is often reduced to economic value, unemployment is a form of deep social isolation.  It severs many of the ties that bind us to others outside our immediate families.  Religious communities (the root of the word is ligare, to bind) can reweave bonds of community that are rooted not in economic value, but in the conviction that each person is an imago dei, an image of God and precious to Him.

From a Christian perspective, the unemployed need to be able to place their suffering in the context of the paschal mystery, to understand how the Father who raised His Son from is speaking to them through these events and offering hope and new life where it seems none can be found.  They need to be able to make the words of the De Profundis their own: “from out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.  Let your years be attentive to the voice of my pleading.”

To that end, I am curious whether anyone here is aware of parishes that have developed ministries or outreach programs aimed specifically at the unemployed.  I’m particularly interested in the spiritual component of such programs and how they might help the unemployed deepen their prayer lives as a source of strength in difficult times.  How can we draw more deeply on the resources of our tradition to meet the unique needs of this population?

I’ve written before (in the magazine, and here at dotCommonweal) about the Vatican’s official policy regarding female altar servers, which strikes me as an embarrassment because of its inconsistency. I have seen many people misstate or misrepresent this policy, so to recap: it was announced in 1994 that canon law permits any lay person, male or female, to serve the priest at Mass. There is no gender-based restriction, such as “Girls may serve only if there aren’t enough boys,” as is sometimes asserted. The job is officially open to both sexes, like every other lay liturgical ministry. However, any bishop may declare that females may not perform this service in his diocese, for whatever reason he likes, and furthermore any pastor may restrict the ministry to men and boys alone even in a diocese where the bishop has not done so. (And making the ministry women-only in a diocese or parish is not allowed.)

Lately the topic of female altar servers has come up in a new arena, with a ruling from Rome that, it seems to me, heaps inconsistency on inconsistency. The ruling came in the form of a private letter from the secretary of Ecclesia Dei, the pontifical commission established to deal with the Lefebvrist schism and more recently charged with overseeing the implementation of Benedict XVI’s Summorum pontificum, which extended permission to celebrate the “Extraordinary Form” of the Roman Liturgy (the so-called Tridentine Rite or Traditional Latin Mass). The subject was not addressed in the recent “instruction” from Ecclesia Dei on applying Summorum pontificum, but in a letter, Msgr. Guido Pozzo “said that ‘permitting female altar servers does not apply to the Extraordinary Form.’”

How does this square with what Benedict said in 2007? At the time of his motu propio extending permission for the EF, he wrote: Read the rest of this entry »

If not, then you missed two great posts–one by Frank Oveis on Marian Ronan’s book Tracing the Sign of the Cross: Sexuality, Mourning, and the Future of American Catholicism, and another by Paul Lakeland on Colm Toíbín and Henry James. What are you waiting for? Bookmark Verdicts. (And why not follow us on Facebook and Twitter, while you’re at it?)

Whatever the name — pretty darn impressive! View it here.

“On Thursday, in advance of a Friday meeting with the president at the White House, Pelosi lit into Obama’s budget director, Jack Lew, in what is becoming a habit of sending sharp messages through his top aides. Pelosi sought to impress on Lew — and no doubt his bosses at the White House — that House Democrats expect to be consulted more now than on past deals and that the president can’t expect to win passage of a debt limit package without support from House Democrats.

“Don’t insult us,” she said as Lew tried to explain why House Democrats were cut out of the budget bill discussion earlier this year, according to one source who was in the room. “You guys don’t know how to count.” On Politico

And she does know how to count! Catholic school education!

Here begins the front page review in tomorrow’s New York Times “Sunday Book Review:”

John Julius Norwich makes a point of saying in the introduction to his history of the popes that he is “no scholar” and that he is “an agnostic Protestant.” The first point means that while he will be scrupulous with his copious research, he feels no obligation to unearth new revelations or concoct revisionist theories. The second means that he has “no ax to grind.” In short, his only agenda is to tell us the story.

And it concludes:

Norwich devotes exactly one chapter to the popes of my lifetime — from the avuncular modernizer John XXIII, whom he plainly loves, to the austere Benedict, off to a “shaky start.” He credits the popular Polish pope, John Paul II — another candidate for sainthood — for his global diplomacy but faults his retrograde views on matters of sex and gender. Norwich’s conclusion may remind readers that he introduced himself as a Protestant agnostic, because whatever his views on God, his views on the papacy are clearly pro-­reformation.
“It is now well over half a century since progressive Catholics have longed to see their church bring itself into the modern age,” he writes. “With the accession of every succeeding pontiff they have raised their hopes that some progress might be made on the leading issues of the day — on homosexuality, on contraception, on the ordination of women priests. And each time they have been disappointed.”

It seems the “ax” is magically  transformed into a quill when wielded in support of the agenda of the Times‘ Executive Editor.

Back during the debate over the Affordable Care Act, some of its critics questioned whether extending health insurance to the uninsured would affect their health outcomes.  Even a few bishops, as I recall, suggested that the right to health care found in Catholic social teaching did necessarily require the provision of insurance.

One of the problems in studying this question is that you can’t just compare people with insurance to people without it, even if you control for income.  There are lots of other differences that are hard to quantify.  However, a few years ago Oregon was in the position of being able to extend health insurance to some–but not all–families who wanted it.  They used a lottery to pick 10,000 of the 90,000 who applied.  Researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research took advantage of this random assignment to test the impact of having insurance.  The results are in:

In its first year of data collection, the study found a long list of differences between the insured and uninsured, adding up to an extra 25 percent in medical expenditures for the insured.

Those with Medicaid were 35 percent more likely to go to a clinic or see a doctor, 15 percent more likely to use prescription drugs and 30 percent more likely to be admitted to a hospital. Researchers were unable to detect a change in emergency room use.

Women with insurance were 60 percent more likely to have mammograms, and those with insurance were 20 percent more likely to have their cholesterol checked. They were 70 percent more likely to have a particular clinic or office for medical care and 55 percent more likely to have a doctor whom they usually saw.

The insured also felt better: the likelihood that they said their health was good or excellent increased by 25 percent, and they were 40 percent less likely to say that their health had worsened in the past year than those without insurance. 

The study also found that those with insurance were 25% less likely to have an unpaid bill sent to a collection agency and were 40% less likely to borrow money or fail to pay bills because they had medical bills.

In the current issue of Commonweal, Elizabeth Kirkland Cahill writes about John Berryman’s “Eleven Addresses to the Lord,” a series of poems he wrote after his treatment for alcoholism at St. Mary’s Hospital in upstate New York. As we were preparing Cahill’s article for publication, we discovered that one of the “Addresses” first appeared in the September 18, 1970 issue of Commonweal. (The magazine ran it again a few years later after the poet’s death.) We also discovered that Commonweal had published another of Berryman’s poems in its May 7, 1948 issue.

WHETHER THERE IS SORROW IN THE DEMONS

Near the top a bad turn some dare. Well,
The horse swerves and screams, his eyes pop,
Feet feel air, the firm winds prop
Jaws wide wider until
Through great teeth rider greets the smiles of Hell.

Thick night, where the host’s thews crack like thongs
A welcome, curving abrupt on cheek & neck.
Now wing swings over once to check
Lick of their fires’ tongues,
Whip & chuckle, hoarse insulting songs.

Powers immortal, fixed, intractable.
Only the lost soul jerks whom they joy hang:
Clap of remorse, and tang and fang
More frightful than the drill
An outsize dentist scatters down a skull;

Nostalgia rips him swinging. Fast in malice
How may his masters mourn, how ever yearn
The frore pride wherein they burn?
God’s fire. To what qui tollis
Stone-tufted ears prick back towards the bright Palace?

Whence Lucifer shone Lucifer’s friends hail
The scourge of choice made at the point of light
Destined into eternal night;
Motionless to fulfill
Their least, their envy looks up dense and pale.

..Repine blackmarket felons; murderers
Sit still their time, till yellow feet go first,
Dies soon in them, and can die, thirst;
Not lives in these, nor years
On years scar their despair — which yet rehearse…

Their belvedere is black. They believe, and quail.
One shudder racks them only, lonely, and
No mirror breaks at their command.
Unsocketed, their will
Grinds on their fate. So was, so shall be still.

Someone ought to take responsibility. That seems to be the prevailing sentiment in Britain now, as yet another scandal (or yet another wave in a continuing scandal) breaks over unethical journalistic practices at the various outlets of Rupert Murdoch’s company News Corp.

The phone-tapping scandal has been going on for some time now in the UK, after it was revealed that reporters for News Corp. tabloids the News of the World and the Sun had hacked into the voice mail of celebrities (actress Sienna Miller; actor Hugh Grant; aides to and members of the royal family) to gather “news.” But a new and even uglier face of the story broke this week, with allegations that News of the World reporters had listened to, and tampered with, the voice mail of a murdered British schoolgirl back in 2002, before her body was found. Not only did the paper’s reporters listen to messages from the missing girl’s frantic family; when her mailbox filled up, they deleted old messages to make room for new ones. This in turn gave the family false hope that the girl might still be alive, and it potentially hampered a police investigation.

In the last few days, more allegations of wrongdoing have sprung up. More people victimized by the paper: families of soldiers killed in active duty; victims of the 7/7 terror attacks. Police officers paid for information. And on and on. The Guardian, which broke the story, has a page devoted to the latest news. These new revelations provoke outrage in a way that the hacking of celebrities’ phones does not, although I think the latter violation ought to be disturbing enough. Tabloid readers may assume that the personal life of Sienna Miller, or Prince Harry, somehow qualifies as “news,” and that those people are therefore not entitled to the privacy the rest of us take for granted. But they’re wrong. Now, however, it’s easy for readers to see the immorality of violating someone’s privacy for juicy headlines. In a sense, of course, the News of the World was always taking advantage of the victims whose grief it sensationalized. But this is an impossible-to-ignore example of the paper taking direct advantage of the people it claimed to champion—victims of “paedophilia,” soldiers in uniform, and so on. And the excuse Murdoch and News Corp. have been hiding behind all along—the claim that any wrongdoing was the responsibility of a few bad apples, acting without the knowledge of top editors—is no longer working. “I hope that you all realize it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations,” Rebekah Brooks—the editor of News of the World at the time of the Milly Dowler case—wrote to her staff (the grammar’s a mess, but you get the idea). Really, it’s much harder to conceive that she didn’t know what was going on: don’t editors usually express curiosity about where reporters are getting their scoops? So, today, News Corp. announced that it is shutting down News of the World come Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »

The Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz asks why we seem to have learned so little from the recession and the financial crisis that precipitated it. Free-market ideology was allowed to do its thing for three decades, and the results are in. But Wall Street and too much of Washington appear determined not to notice — or, having noticed, to forget. People who ought to know better are still taking shelter under the false certainties the crisis discredited. The consequence, writes Stiglitz, may be a “Great Recession, Part II.”

Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology—the belief in free and unfettered markets—brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its heyday, from the early 1980s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest of the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate.

Moreover, output growth in the United States was not economically sustainable. With so much of U.S. national income going to so few, growth could continue only through consumption financed by a mounting pile of debt.

I was among those who hoped that, somehow, the financial crisis would teach Americans (and others) a lesson about the need for greater equality, stronger regulation, and a better balance between the market and government. Alas, that has not been the case. On the contrary, a resurgence of right-wing economics, driven by ideology and special interests, once again threatens the global economy—or at least the economies of Europe and North America, where these ideas continue to flourish.

Lawrence Summers has come up with a good term for the tendency of policy-makers to respond to every crisis by saying whatever they said before the crisis, only louder. He calls it “Now-more-than-everism.” We are seeing the syndrome, now more than ever, in the debate about deficits and the debt ceiling. Whatever the problem, low taxes are the solution. They cure recessions, protect economic growth, increase revenue, and discourage bureaucratic waste. Tax rates are never too low for anyone; they are never low enough, even now, when our revenue-to-GDP ratio is lower than it’s been in sixty years — and among the lowest in the developed world. The idea that the country might be undertaxed is, to the now-more-than-ever supply-sider, not so much wrong as inconceivable. It does no good to point out that the economy was in better shape — and the national debt on its way to extinction — under President Clinton’s higher tax rates (which were still quite low, historically). It may be a fact, but it does not compute and so must be strenuously ignored. The frightening alternative is a character-shaking, potentially career-ending change of mind. It’s worth recalling that the most impressive post-crisis confession of error by a prominent free-market economist came from someone who’s career had already ended.

Don’t miss Anthony Domestico’s Verdicts post “The Past Is a Foreign Country”:

Reading Wolf Hall and thinking about Paul Lakeland’s post on Ron Hansen’s latest novel has got me wondering: why does it seem as if every “literary” novelist—I hate to use that term, but it will have to suffice—is writing historical fiction these days? Hansen, Tom McCarthy, Peter Carey, David Mitchell—these are some of the most original, inventive writers of contemporary fiction, and each has found recourse to that well-worn genre, historical fiction, within the last year or so….

I have a few ideas about why these writers are finding bygone eras to be of such fertile fictional ground. First, they may be reacting against the legacy of high modernism, the great works of which (Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway) deemphasized plot and content, finding interest instead in subjectivity and pure form. Writing a historical novel almost necessarily means that you’re going to be interested in things like setting and objective narration—it’s hard to imagine a stream-of-consciousness novel set in the Tudor court—and so, in reclaiming the joys of setting and plot, perhaps writers like Mitchell are trying to distance themselves from a particular formalist tradition.

Read the rest right here.

Though I have had the great good fortune of being able to spend significant time in Rome over the past ten years, I had not been to Florence in thirty years.

Finally, two weeks ago, I spent three glorious days there. The weather was ideal, the throngs good-humored, and the food fine.

But rather than line up for the Uffizi, or battle for a glimpse of the “David,” we spent quality time in three places where the art was in its native setting: “in medio ecclesiae.”

So we lingered long and lovingly in San Miniato al Monte, the splendid 12th century basilica overlooking and blessing the city. We also spent hours in Santa Maria Novella, mostly contemplating Masaccio’s great depiction of the Trinity, and the restored crucifix by Giotto, suspended between earth and heaven.

But the place which, for me, was the most impressive of all was the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, with the great frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino. The ability of the artists to bring the biblical scenes into living engagement with the reality of their present was awe-inspiring; and a direct challenge to preacher and worshiper to do so today.

In illo tempore — in hoc tempore.

Here is Masaccio’s depiction of Peter raising the young man.

July 9: News of the new U.S. ambassador to Israel: “[Dan] Shapiro said Obama instructed him to make Israel’s security his top priority. “This we are doing by raising the remarkable cooperation and coordination between our militaries and our intelligence services to their highest levels ever,” he said. In addition, he said his job entails safeguarding Israel’s future as a Jewish, democratic state and working to expand the depth and breadth of the bonds between the Israeli and American people, including their “burgeoning economic relationship.” Ha’aretz

July 6: George Mitchell’s departure as President Obama’s representative to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations has left Dennis Ross in charge of the non-negotiations (you remember Dennis Ross who has been nursing the non-negotiations for two decades).

Akiva Eldar, Israeli journalist and chief political correspondent for Ha’aretz [and to the Demonizers, not an anti-Semite], raises questions about whom Ross is actually working for: “It would be tough to find a bigger expert than Ross on the myths and illusions related to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. For years he has been nurturing the myth that if the United States would only meet his exact specifications, the Israeli right would offer the Arabs extensive concessions.

“During the years he headed the American peace team, Israeli settlement construction ramped up. Now Ross, the former chairman of the Jewish People Policy Institute, is trying to convince the Palestinians to give up on bringing Palestinian independence for a vote in the United Nations in September and recognize the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people — in other words, as his country, though he was born in San Francisco, more than that of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was born in Safed.”

Ha’aretz article here.

Stephen Walt’s comments on Eldar’s essay, and a homey observation:”In what other line of work could someone fail consistently for two decades and still have a job?

Read the rest of this entry »

is the title of this piece in NCR.

I’m not a parishioner there, and don’t know any of the principals involved. I do know of St. Joe’s reputation as a peace and justice church–people speak reverently of that dynamic and committed community. Especially sad in this light is the apparent marginalization of the Latino members of the congregation (or at least of the Latino organizations within the congregation, which may not be the same thing.)

To be fair–it’s hard to be the new pastor when a loved pastor emeritus is still around. In some churches, pastors are required to leave the community when a successor arrives, in order to prevent factions from forming, etc. Clearly a conflict of pastoral approaches is partly the issue here.

However, it’s also hard to see how summarily evicting a 75-year old man from the rectory is a healing move. Moreover, it strains credibility that the allegations of sacramental malfeasance against him are as grave as they are said to be–the man had been ministering there for 30 years. Surely if he was running roughshod over the sacraments, it wouldn’t take 30 years to have problems come to light. And I cannot imagine that Bishop Cordileone means to impugn the governance of his predecessor, Alan Vigneron, now Archbishop of Detroit, in this regard…

I anticipate many of the current members of St. Joe’s will vote with their feet, alas. The pastor’s hardball ecclesiastical tactics might win the battle–clearly already have. What a sad day when the police are called to empty a church! I am sorry for the damage done to a real landmark of social justice on the local scene.

Head over to Verdicts for Scott D. Moringiello’s post on David Foster Wallace’s view of the sacred.

In an interview, Wallace said that he went through RCIA twice. Unfortunately, the interviewer did not pursue the line of questioning. In 2008, after a long battle with clinical depression and having been off his medication for some time, he killed himself. Perhaps he is an example of baptism by desire.

The current issue of Commonweal carries my critique of the new translation of the Roman Missal (It Doesn’t Sing), as well as a brief chronology offered as a sidebar to the story (Roman Missal Crisis). Both are now available to non-subscribers.

The sidebar is intended to help the reader keep track of key developments that led to where we are today. It’s complicated, and unless one has followed the story closely over the years, it’s easy to lose sight of some of these episodes.

(The editors at Commonweal have also noted two related articles by other authors. Lost in Translation (2005), by John Wilkins, describes what happened to ICEL and how Vox Clara came to be. All In? (2008), by Toan Joseph Do, takes on the thorny question of whether it is more fitting to say that Jesus died “for all” or “for many.” Both make good reading.)

Some thoughtful comments were posted on the story page of “It Doesn’t Sing.” The discussion will continue here however, so I’d encourage anyone who commented there to copy and repost their comments on this thread.

Sorry folks. The content of the post I put up earlier somehow got deleted, which did, of course, deter several of you from responding!

I’m working on a feature about conceptions of hell among Catholics and I was looking for folks to share their personal experiences rather than theological arguments per se. Did fear of hell play a significant role in your religious imagination when you were growing up? Does it still? Have your views changed over the years? Thanks to all who have already responded and for the chance to clarify my original question.

I’ve finished season one–about the projects in Baltimore, and am now on to season two–about the port.  Each season, apparently, the theme song, the spiritual “Way Down in the Hole,” receives a different rendition.  I found this one jarringly beautiful and menacing at the same time: