The following on my LAKE COUNTY OHIO WEAL site is the first of a series of posts on the latest papal exhortation.
Why the Waste? ON LOVE OF THE POOR
Papal exhortations rank lower than Papal encyclicals. However, in many ways Joy of the Gospel, an exhortation, was the most important document of Pope Francis since it set out the direction of his pontificate.
Pundits will spend much time analyzing how much of this document is Francis and how much is Leo since it was begun under Francis and finished by Leo. It's theme LOVE OF THE POOR both looks back and also continues Francis's emphasis upon the Church as a poor church for the poor.
However, the length and style of this document are much simpler than we usually see in such papal documents. Francis was spontaneous, and often memorable, but it was not always clear what he was saying, e.g. what does "the smell of the sheep" really mean? Leo will unlikely be as colorful as Francis, but a short, clear and simple writing style may win him a hearing. Whereas Francis often seemed to let his aids elaborate his ideas in ways that often did not clarify them, Leo seems to have pared down the draft to its essentials while still making it his own.
In addition to a commentary on paragraph #4 of the exhortation that is only slightly longer than the text itself, I have provided two scriptural contexts.
The story is unusual because it occurs in all four gospels although in different editorial contexts. These texts contain almost all the uses of the Greek word for ointment in the NT.
Sorry, I thought I had commented last night, but apparentlyh forgot to hit the Publish button. Just want to say, I haven't read the exhortation yet, and look forward to it. Thanks for this post (and the link to your other site.)
ReplyDeleteWe are finally home. I will try to read Pope Leo tonight. The news capsules are encouraging
ReplyDeleteAnne, I'm glad you are safely home! Hopefully your husband feeling much better.
DeleteA liitle trivial Pope Leo news, someone gifted him with a horse. I enjoyed the video clip of him petting the horse. He used to ride a horse in Peru, probably out of necessity on some rugged roads.
Since horses don't like being solitary, I hope Proton (that's his name) can hang out with other horses. Maybe the Swiss Guards have some horses. He is 12 years old, which is middle aged, and is said to have a calm disposition. That is good since the pope is 70, it wouldn't do for him to get bucked off.
Bet you are relieved to be home. Hope husband is feeling ok and on the mend. Sounds like a pretty fraught trip. Rest up!
DeleteWe are taking our annual trip Up North to see the fall color. Just stopped in Clare for our picnic lunch, headed to Roscommon, and Higgins Lake. Crystal clear day, 59 degrees.
That sounds like a lovely trip, Jean.
DeleteThank you. It was a very fraught trip, difficult in several ways.
DeleteJean, the trees were turning in Connecticut but not yet full color. Last year we went to Rhode Island with perfect weather and almost peak leaf peeking. Enjoy! I’m curious about Roscommon because my maternal grandfather’s mother was from Roscommon Ireland. But they emigrated to New York State near Corning, not Michigan.
Katherine- “ He used to ride a horse in Peru, probably out of necessity on some rugged roads.”
Yes. I’m sure that’s true. When I visited our sister parish in the mountains of the Dominican Republic there was a main road, paved, and a few very rough dirt roads to reach some the villages. Many villages were reached only by trails. The parish had 30,000 members, technically, spread out in small villages throughout the mountains. We visited several somewhat larger villages reachable by pickup ( the bishop also drove a pickup) with the pastor and the nursing sisters from Spain who provided medical care and trained the women in the villages in midwifery and first aid. We also visited a couple of villages with the Bishop on his annual pastoral visits. He was a wonderful person. Perhaps all bishops and popes should spend a good part of their early years as priests or bishops in a third world country. Parish priests here should spend several years in inner city and/ or Appalachian towns. Maybe then they wouldn’t be so MAGA.
When going to one village, the pastor rode a horse (American priest with a heart of gold but he couldn’t hike up - he was very overweight unfortunately- he died of a massive heart attack a few years later), but most of us hiked up, and there were a few mules. I came down the mountain on a mule because I had been so slow walking up! The rest of the group ( that included 6 teenagers from our Maryland parish) didn’t want me slowing them down again. I sat clinging to the rider while looking down a 1000 foot or so drop to the river gorge while the ( thankfully) surefooted mule was guided by the local guy down the very narrow path. He kept saying “ Mula, mula…” all the way down. The pastor usually used a horse to visit the villages to perform baptisms, and funerals, a lot of funerals for babies and young children. They lived in one room shacks with dirt floors, sleeping mats on the dirt floors, cooking pots, no running water or electricity. Unclean water from streams and lakes (full of parasites - killing many babies and young children)), no sewage but they sometimes had dug village latrines. Moms with a dozen or more kids by the time they were 30, so maternal deaths were not uncommon. One woman I met had given birth to 19 children - only five lived to adulthood. The people were mostly illiterate subsistence farmers. He would give them communion and say mass apparently but couldn’t visit most of the remote villages more than once/twice year. The town where the church was located was too far for most to attend Sunday mass because of walking down lousy mountain roads. The pastor told me that he and the Catholic nun/ nurses couldn’t distribute condoms but he would welcome any secular groups who would. He was tired of Burundi young women and their babies. NFP is too complicated, and requires diligent charting and basal temperature thermometers. But he said that the machismo of the men meant that even if condoms we’re provided, most would refuse to use them.
burying
DeleteRoscommon, Clare counties in Michigan had a lot of Irish immigrants,.my mother's people among them.
DeleteJean - maybe we’re related way back! About 12 years ago I got the bug to look up information about some of the relatives on both my parents’ families. I found a website in Roscommon Ireland that had a message board. I was shocked to find a message from someone looking for others descended from my great grandmother’s family. They had a secure way of allowing people to get email addresses and communicate directly. It turned out that this woman’s great-great grandfather was the brother of my great- grandmother. She lives in Sonoma in California, and I had been staying in that area about a week before getting into contact with her. I was back home by then. Another connection - she grew up in DC but eventually moved to California, while I grew up in California and moved to DC. We exchanged some details about our distant relatives and then lost track of one another. Unfortunately I haven’t been back to that part of California since and I’m not sure that I still have her email in the unlikely event that I do head back to wine country.
DeleteOur priest when I was a child was from County Roscommon, in Ireland. He had been ordained in 1920 in Ireland, but served most of his career in the US. He served in our parish from 1950 until his death in 1965. Back then western Nebraska was "mission territory", and Ireland wss sending priests to the US.
DeleteMy Roscommon an ester came to America in the 1840s. I think. I really would have to find the records.
DeleteMy Irish ancestors were all from the north of Ireland. They settled where there were other Irish people established in Michigan. In those years after the famine feeling against English rule was legion among both Catholic and Protestant Irish. Things didn't divide along religious lines until later. The Irish in northern Michigan were wild and pretty ruthless with Natives and Mormons. Interesting history, but not much to be proud of.
DeleteHuh - according to the Google AI engine, my Irish ancestors also originated in Roscommon, but relocated to West Cork in the 13th century.
DeleteMy Irish ancestors were mostly farmers, in Ireland and in the US. The New York immigrants ( my mother’s father’s family) were farmers in Ireland and New York. Not especially wild apparently. But my grandmothers parents originally settled in Pennsylvania. Her father was a farmer in Ireland, but worked in the mines for a while in Pennsylvania before moving to Nebraska to farm ahead. I think he got free land from the government. My grandmother was born in Nebraska. The family were apparently among the founding families of the Catholic parish in the area where they settled. I forget where, so I will have to look it up. Maybe Katherine can fill me in on background for Irish folk in that part of Nebraska. Katherine, your family was Scandinavian heritage, weren’t they? Not Catholic origins?
DeleteAnyway, I’m still reading highlights of Pope Leo’s paper. At some point I might read the actual document.
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DeleteNot to speak for Katherine but I think she’s of Norwegian background and I believe Norwegians are often Catholic. Anyway, she can correct me if I’m wrong.
DeleteAccording to google, only 5% of current day Norwegians are Catholic, mostly immigrants from Poland. For a while all Norwegians were expected to be members of the Church of Norway, apparently a form of the Lutheran church. .
DeleteConservative Catholics are all hoping that the Episcopal Church and Church of England are dying, frequently pointing out the decline in absolute numbers. They blame it on having women priests, ignoring the fact that millions of Catholics in the US have left even though there are no women priests. Of course they also ignore the fact that the Catholic Church in the US has lost more cradle Catholics during the last 40 years in both absolute numbers ( it has always been the most numerous single denomination) but as a percentage than the ECUSA and other mainline Protestant churches.
The RCC in America’s numbers loss has appeared less dramatic because of the immigrants from Latin America refilling the pews. The same immigrants that 60% of white Catholics want to deport before slamming the door shut. . England has a somewhat similar situation. The Catholic Churches there now have more regular Sunday members than the C of E - largely because of the immigrants from Poland and other Catholic nations in the EU. Sometimes they seem to resent the white Catholics from eastern Europe even more than those from their former colonies, like Indians, Jamaicans, and the “Pakis”. I’ve been shocked at times by conversations I’ve heard there. We’ve traveled a lot in England during the last 45 years, and their class distinctions, even among the white citizens, are still very strong. Not just skin color, but foreign ethnicity ( like Poles) and accents. As Americans they never knew what “class” we are from, so we were treated as equal by my husband’s professional colleagues in the British Navy, and even as tourists. We developed a friendship with one Navy officer and his wife ( daughter of another and very proud of her ancestors) that lasted for decades. We stayed with them on many occasions over the years. Utterly upper class Brits. I still remember the shock on his face when he learned I was Catholic, not Protestant like my husband. One of their daughters stayed with us every summer when she was in “ uni” because she worked in summer camps as a counselor here under an exchange program. One year she brought a friend who was a Protestant from Belfast. She was stunned to learn of our different religious backgrounds - married!. She said that she and her friends in Belfast had Catholic friends that met in secret clubs, and never told their families on either side. She said that she and her friends all wished that they could live together as Protestants and Catholics as we do in the US. She would be in her 60s now at least, and although the situation in Northern Ireland is better than it was then, it’s still rocky.
Tribalism is really one of the roots of evil, along with greed.
Stanley, the Scandinavian part of my family was Danish rather than Norwegian, but similar situation. They were all Lutheran, that was the state church in the 19th century. I don't know if they still have an established church, but they do have freedom of religion. The Catholic side of the family was from my paternal grandmother, whose roots were French. She was married to my Danish grandpa, who stayed Lutheran until his death. The only Lutherans around were the LCMS, and he was not comfortable with them. So he didn't mind if they raised my dad Catholic. Mom's side were Scots Irish and English , they were Presbyterians and Baptists.
DeleteGreat religious blend in your family, Katherine!
DeleteI just registered for a local No Kings protest. I hope I can make it. I’ve never gone to a protest in my life in spite of coming of age in the 60s.
DeleteJean, the idea of genes playing a role in alcoholism is pretty well established, but I’m not so sure about personality traits. Did you ever read Sarum or any other books by Edward Rutherford? He creates several families set into the backdrop of many eras of history. The narratives follow them through thousands of years. One feature of these families is that personality traits continue through the family for dozens of generations.
DeleteI have read that even if you can't attend a protest, wear yellow in solidarity with No Kings. Trying to figure out what I have that's yellow.
DeleteAnne, in answer to your question about Irish settlers in Nebraska, it depends on what part they were in. I assume that they came to take advantage of the Homestead Act. Which was in a sense "free land", but there were conditions.
DeleteIn the eastern part of the state, there were a lot of ethnic communities. In the western part, where I am from, it was more random, though there were some clusters of people from the same ethnicity. Would be interesting to find out what community your ancestors settled in.
"For a while all Norwegians were expected to be members of the Church of Norway, apparently a form of the Lutheran church"
DeleteI believe it's the official, "Established" church in Norway, i.e. the state-sanctioned church.
I once met with a couple who wished to be married in our church. Neither was baptized. The bride-to-be was an American, of Italian ancestry; as a young girl, she was always envious of her cousins who got to receive communion when they went to church as an extended family. So she was excited when we told her about RCIA (as it was called at that time). She ended up receiving her sacraments of initiation later the following year. The husband-to-be is from Norway. Growing up there, his family wasn't religious, but he received religious instruction throughout his primary schooling - it's part of the public school curriculum. So he believed he is pretty knowledgeable about Christianity already; but when we invited him to accompany his fiancee in RCIA, he said, "No thanks, at least not at this time."
"I have read that even if you can't attend a protest, wear yellow in solidarity with No Kings"
DeleteOk, so - our suburban area's annual pro-life march is this Saturday, too. There is a guy there every year who who sells t shirts with a pro-life theme. And the last few years, they've been yellow. So if we line Route 14 again in our yellow shirts, we might be showing inadvertent solidarity!
"I just registered for a local No Kings protest. I hope I can make it. I’ve never gone to a protest in my life"
DeleteThere will be one in our suburban town. My wife attended the previous one (was that a couple of months ago?) I think it was a first for her, too. I'm proud of her getting out there.
Katherine, my grandmother was born in Dodge, NE. Her parents were buried in St Patricks Church in Dodge
DeleteDodge is a town of about 600+ people in northeastern Nebraska. It's about 50 miles from where we live. The church is listed as St. Wenceslaus. But there is a St. Patrick's cemetery about 10 miles from Dodge, maybe that's where your great grandparents are buried? The nearest large town is Fremont, and the parish there is called St. Patrick's. I see that St. Wenceslaus in Dodge is in a "family of parishes" served by three priests. They don't have a resident psstor, but they do have a couple of daily Masses during the week, and one on Sunday morning.
DeleteMy great grandfather died in 1918. I imagine the town was even smaller a century+ ago. But rereading the paragraph of information I have I see that he lived in North Bend when he died, but was then buried in Dodge at St Patricks. I don’t have the details of my great grandmothers death, but I’m sure it was probably the same place. They had 11 children, “at least” according to the paragraph of information. According to my grandmother, her mother was the midwife for the community. She rode a horse to travel to the farms to deliver babies. I wonder who helped her give birth to her own 11 kids. You are right - St Patrick’s wasn’t a church - it was St Patrick’s cemetery.
DeleteWe used to go through North Bend every time we went to Omaha until they built the bypass and routed the highway around the town. I miss going through there, it was a nice little town and we always stopped at the convenience store there.
DeleteI don’t have a single yellow anything in my wardrobe. I’ll hunt through the ale members of the family’s old t- shirts.
ReplyDeleteNorwegian public school religion instruction may be acceptable because I provides education on multiple world religions - it’s apparently not like the goal of white Christian Nationalists who want to have explicitly Christian (of the evangelical view) religious instruction in American public schools
AI summary
About the religion class
Subject name: The mandatory course is called KRLE (Christianity, Religion, Philosophy and Ethics) and is taught from grades 1 through 10.
Objective: The curriculum is designed to be objective, critical, and pluralistic, promoting tolerance and respect for all religious beliefs, as well as for atheism and other worldviews.
No preaching: Preaching is banned in Norwegian schools, and the focus is on teaching about different religions rather than promoting any single one.
No single viewpoint: While Christianity has historical and cultural significance, the course teaches about various world religions and philosophies together in the same classroom.
Earlier this week, my wife and I attended a lecture at our parish presented by a teacher from one of the local public high schools. He is a full-time teacher of Comparative Religion - that was not the title of the course, but it was what it was called when I took a somewhat similar course in the 1970s in my Catholic high school. He teaches five sections every semeseter, and apparently there is a waiting list to get in. He told us he is the first public school teacher in the area - perhaps in Illinois - to be able to offer such a class. Students who take his class also receive college credit from one of the state universities, Eastern Illinois.
DeleteThe students in the school district around here are religiously diverse. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, some Buddhists, Sikhs and more. And of course, many varieties / denominations of Christianity.
His topic was finding the divine in everyday life. He provided passagaes for us to read by Julian of Norwich, Abraham Heschel, a 13th century Sufi mystic named Rumi, and a Sikh woman who is alive today but whose name I no longer remember. (I wasn't smart enough to keep the handout.) It was pretty interesting.
As an aside: this lecture series meets four times/year. It's not a parish event per se; it actually started at a different parish, by which I am given to understand the organizers (a very nice group of women from the local community) eventually were asked to find another home, I believe because their topics offend a certain conservative Catholic identitariian sensibility. The series is called Contemporary Theology. It used to be called Women's Contemporary Theology. There were probably 150 or so people who attended. I try to attend all of them. Frequently the presenter is drawn from the Catholic Theological Union (CTU), among the alumni of which is Pope Leo XIV.
As another aside, finding mystical affinities across other religions needn't be "conservative" or "liberal", but in my observation, the topic appeals more to religious progressives than religious conservatives. Many of the attendees had read Rumi before (I confess I had not previously heard of him). Discussing it with my wife afterward, I told her I was more motivated to go deeper into Catholicism than reach out to other faiths. But there is more than one way to be a Catholic.
Jim, that sounds like a really interesting lecture series. I had heard of Rumi, mostly because of quotes on inspirational cards or pictures. Of course we have heard of Julian of Norwich, and the other writers sound interesting too.
DeleteJim, that sounds like a great class. Our two older sons went to a diocesan high school . Both took the class called Great Religions of the World ( or something). Only honor students were allowed to take it for some reason. The teacher told me that she had to fight for it every year because many people didn’t think they should teach the kids anything at all about other religions. This was in the dioceses of Arlington VA, one of the most conservative in the country, especially during the time our sons were students there. I hadn’t known that about Arlington Diocese then because we live in Maryland, which is in the Archdiocese of Washington DC. Our third son didn’t go there. I became increasingly unhappy with it because it wasn’t a very Christian environment even though it was Catholic school. Son #3 went to an Episcopal high school instead. It was a much more Christian environment.
DeleteI admit to being a bit surprised that you had never heard of Rumi before that class!
Right, medieval Sufi mysticism hasn't been something that has crossed paths with me until this week.
DeleteDid a lot of demonstrations 40-50 yrs ago over Vietnam, Nixon, women's rights (sorry, Jim). Too decrepit now and I can no longer yell, chant, or sing without coughing. God works in mysterious ways ...
ReplyDeleteToo bad cuz I could use those Antifa checks from George Soros.
Anne, never heard of Sarum or Rutherford, and deleted my post bc no one here needs that sordid story. I thought it might help me underscore that I don't engage in ancestor worship, but decided I was being overly sensitive about that comment.
I do value the decent, normal people in other branches of my family and their stories. Or stories of decent people in anybody's family, really.
Jean -I'm American - I defend your right to burn your bra back in the day.
DeleteYeah, Good Catholics oppose the ERA and feminism, according to one of the Church Ladies in RCIA. She was always going off on harangues about that. I finally told her that I wanted to be a Catholic, not a member of the Eagle Forum. I think the other Church lady "had a word" with her, and she backed off on the political stuff.
DeleteLOL, the Eagle Forum. Brings back some memories. My mom found some things to admire about Phyllis Schaffly. I liked what my dad said about her though. "She smiles too much with her mouth." Meaning that there was a touch of phoniness about her.
Delete"Smiles too much with her mouth." Oh boy, is that ever a Midwest guy right there. My dad used to say the same thing about TV preachers. We don't trust smilers.
DeletePhyllis Schaffly did this kind of "trad wife" schtick before it was fashionable. And apparently didn't see the irony of making a rather lucrative career out of it.
DeleteShe was a Country Club Republican and anti-communist. Knew how to use her connections and was a hell of an organizer. In my view, she was proof that women were smart and capable, a walking, talking lesson in irony and contradiction, bless her little blonde up-do.
DeleteJim, what happened to the Italian RCIA lady and her Norwegian? Did they get married? In yr church? Paul Harvey up and tell the rest of the story.
ReplyDeleteJust playing catch-up: You have to register for protests now? With whom do you register? And what will they do with the list of names? Sounds pretty sketchy.
ReplyDeleteYou don’t have to register. I could just show up. But I did register. I presume I will now be on a mailing list that I can block if it gets onerous. . But they use the total registration numbers in their reporting after the events - to document the turnout.
DeleteI’ll be attending the NK march in Stroudsburg tomorrow. Driving my neighbor and her friend. I made a sign, perhaps too busy, but it’s about things beyond Trump. Trump could croak tomorrow and we’d still have serious problems. Anyway, if you attend a march, please be safe. In two Sundays, I’ll be attending a lunch with my cousins in King of Prussia. My guess is they’ll be doubling down on the crazy stuff. Just read a Substack article about how, when things go bad, followers of Stalin and Hitler became more devoted, blaming their suffering on external actors and traitors, not their beloved leader. I think this dynamic is operative with MAGAs.
DeleteI thought of you Stanley, while driving home from Connecticut on Wednesday. We avoid NYC and I95, so cross the Hudson at the Tappan Zee bridge, south through NJ, west through Pennsylvania through Allentown to Harrisburg then into Maryland. It’s a pretty drive with the farms and the hills. I don’t remember exactly where you live, but knew that it wasn’t too far. It was a beautiful day too. Small blessings. Good luck with your lunch with the MAGA relatives!
Delete“ when things go bad, followers of Stalin and Hitler became more devoted, blaming their suffering on external actors and traitors, not their beloved leader. I think this dynamic is operative with MAGAs.”. I think you’re right about that.
It's really, really hard to admit you were wrong. Especially if you devoted a lot of time and energy to being wrong.
DeleteJean, the novel, Sarum, is about English history, conveyed through the fictional stories of multiple generations of a few families in England from the dawn of time. The families lived in Sarum, now known as Salisbury. It’s a very long book, lots of real history woven in, but getting through the book takes patience. At least for me. I did make it through and it was interesting enough to keep me going. I also read his book on Ireland.
DeleteI read Sarum a lot of years ago. I kind of forgot the details. That was when I still had an attention span to read a thousand page book. I used to read James Michener and Leon Uris too. Now the internet has rotted my brains. I ought to re-read Sarum, if I can find a copy. I remember that I liked it.
DeleteWasn't "Sarum Use" a form of Anglican liturgy?
"Sarum blue" appears to be a bluish violet color of liturgical vestment.
My mistake, Sarum Use was actually Catholic, and was suppressed in the Reformation.
DeleteIt seems few writers produce such long books these days. I too read a Michener or two and also Leon Uris. I tried to get through Rutherford’s book on Russia but don’t think I ever finished it.
DeleteThe Susan Howatch Starbridge series is also set in Salisbury, Salisbury Cathedral and the clergy there are the central characters, but the novel renames it Starbridge Cathedral.
DeleteNot history, a bit too much gothic, but I found the books to be interesting because the characters represent different factions within Anglicanism.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/the-novels-of-susan-howatch
I read Pillars of the Earth several years ago, and after that I put sweeping historical sagas on my Auto Reject list. Made an exception for The Corner that Held Them that Katherine wrote about here and glad I did. One of my favorite books! (Lolly Willowes by same author is also wonderful but quite diff.) But I had to keep a running list of characters and their changing roles.
DeleteI liked the TV version of Cornwell's saga about Uhtred of Bamberg and Alfred the Great, but not tempted to read it now.
Different factions in Anglicanism. The Barchester books by Trollope have an exhaustive breakdown of the C of E in Victorian times. Mrs Proudie, the ultimate Church Lady!
Delete“ Mrs Proudie, the ultimate Church Lady!” Ha! Well named.
DeleteThe Starbridge series isn’t real history, but I found some of it interesting. It is definitely not “ literature”. The books got a bit too gothic novel- like eventually. But before her conversion, gothic romance novels were her genre so that style came into her Church of England series too.
I read some Susan Howatch books before she got religion, some of them were okay. The Starbridge series kind of lost me, a little weird.
DeleteKatherine, the Starbridge books got weirder and weirder as each new one was published.
DeleteSusan Howatch and Anne Rice had some life and career similarities. Anne Rice was well known for vampire novels - not my cup of tea. I started to see her name in Catholic media because she had returned to the church. She was raised Catholic in New Orleans, and eventually became as atheist. A nostalgic trip to New Orleans and her family church rekindled her Catholicism. After this reversion she wrote a couple of Christianity based novels. But she left Catholicism again after ten or so years because her son is gay and she didn’t like the RCC’s teachings on homosexuality or on women. She is now again not religious but says she still admires Jesus.
DeleteSusan Howatch was known for the gothic romance novels she wrote before her conversion to Christianity - apparently this happened because she had moved to Salisbury and loved the Cathedral, spending a lot of time there. After her conversion she wrote the Starbridge series. According to Wiki, she Eventually renounced her very successful, very lucrative writing career and gave a lot of money to Cambridge to support a specific lecture post
“ Howatch has used some of the profits from her novels to found an academic post with the title 'Starbridge Lecturer in Natural Science and Theology' in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, devoted to linking the fields of science and religion.”
Her publisher said that he had never previously had a successful author walk away from writing extremely popular novels. He said she turned to serious writing because she no longer found writing popular novels to be either intellectually or morally satisfying.
I don’t know if Anne Rice did anything similar. I suspect not since she no longer describes herself as a Christian.
I have never read any of Anne Rice’s books, but a close friend who had left the church had read some. This friend asked me about Anne Rice’s reversion to Catholicism. I didn’t know much but told her what I had read in Catholic media.
I think Anne Rice passed away?
DeleteI read Vampire Lestat, which I sort of liked. One darkly funny part was when Lestat had tired of some of his vampire stuff and decided to go to confession. "Bless me Father, I have sinned, it has been two hundred years since my last confession..." That did not end well.
There was a sort of reverse Viaticum scene in which Lestat made his mother a vampire on her deathbed to keep her from dying. Proved that there are worse things than dying.
I tried one or two of the sequels but for me Lestat was a one hit wonder.
I read her Jesus book and thought it was good.
I didn't read any of her erotica books. I don't think I missed anything.
Yes, Anne Rice died some years back.
DeleteI read and enjoyed Interview With a Vampire when I was doing a conference paper on literary vampires a million years ago. (Fun fact, most of the conventions in vampire stories--garlic, crucifixes, turning into bats, etc--comes from literature, not folklore, though vampires have existed in legends for millennia in cultures across the world.)
Rice's historical fiction is quite good. A Feast of All Saints is about the free black population in New Orleans before the Civil War. Cry to Heaven is about the castrati opera singers in Italy.
Lives of the Mayfair Witches series was dreadful. Orgiastic lists of the fine china, silver, and luxury soft furnishings in the Mayfair homes. Painfully slow plot development.
Interview With a Vampire was the one I read, rather than Vampire Lestat.
DeleteHi Anne, if you had gone west on Route 80 and crossed into PA, that’s pretty much where I am. But going south is more direct. I was thinking of you, too. Glad you both got home ok.
ReplyDeleteInteresting reports from No Kings rally in Grand Rapids, Mich. Very religious part of the state, so No Kings led by a coalition of 12 clergy and marked with ecumenical prayers by speakers. At least one attendee was a Catholic priest.
ReplyDeleteIt was common to see clerical collars and cassocks in the 1960s civil rights marches, less common at Vietnam War protests, never now unless at anti-abortion rallies. I presume RCC clergy at No Kings was a rarity rather than the rule.
To move back to Pope Leo: My sense is that he would not unilaterally discourage or ban American clergy from participating in human rights demonstrations. But RCC clergy strike me as very disinclined to participate in any kind of public demonstrations that would alienate their white Trump-voting majority.
This is pure speculation,. Only my personal impressions. Catholic clergy and women religious were once prominent leaders in the civil rights movement, and in other progressive political movements, at least that’s how it seemed to be in reports and photos in the 60s and 70s. The Berrigan brothers were notorious. But applications to seminary plunged in the 70s, vowed priests and nuns left those vocations by the hundreds and even thousands. The numbers kept going down until the 90s, when they flattened and have remained fairly stable. The dramatic plunge in applicants to seminaries contributed to the equally dramatic rise in the diaconate. The only deacons around when I grew up and for years after were priests in formation, not men like Jim and Kelly. The diaconate was revived because there weren’t enough priests or future priests.
DeleteThose who were applying to seminaries by the 90s were dominated by young men from very conservative families, those who had JPII and Benedict on pedestals. That cohort is often referred to as the JPII/ Benedict generation of priests. Their parents were not political activists, nor were they fans of Vatican II. They were very conservative politically and in their church preferences. They were ardently anti- abortion, and anti- feminism. Their sons are now pastors, and the younger ones are often the sons of the trads. I suspect that the reasons they don’t show up at protests are not because of fear of offending the white trump loving majority, but because they too are MAGA. They don’t show because they think trump is great, just like Dolan and Barron and too many others.
Over the last 25 years most progressives have left the RCC or have been driven out because of a “ hostile “ environment- one where they don’t feel comfortable chatting with the right- wing parishioners during coffee hour. Some old folk still hang on but those younger than 60 are mostly long gone. The JPII/Benedict priests helped to create this situation. They don’t teach Social Justice because they aren’t aligned personally with Catholic Social Justice teachings, even though they are fanatical when it comes to abortion. The younger cohort are fascinated with the pre- Vatican II church, including their ridiculous predilection for cassocks when not saying mass and fancy vestments when they are. How any sane adult could go to confession to these men or look to them for spiritual guidance is beyond me, but some do.
You may be right about MAGA priests. Just interested in whether Francis's and Leo's very mild reminders about the poor and marginalized temper that trad strain at all.
DeleteI seriously doubt it. They were anti- Francis because of his emphasis on life issues other than abortion, and because of his focus on the poor. Leo is saying the same things, only a bit more forcefully perhaps. I still haven’t read the exhortation. . The conservative Catholics got their hopes up because Leo has been more traditional in his choice of papal wearing apparel and living in the Papal apartments. But he too lived among the poor for years and he learned from that experience it seems. My eyes were opened from my only one week trek through villages in the poorest part of the Dominican Republic. Leo spent years ministering to the poor - not just to wealthy Peruvians. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
DeleteNot sure you need to go all the way to the DR to get your eyes opened about poverty ...
DeleteJean, there is areal difference in being in the midst of third world poverty and seeing photos, documentaries, and news stories. The nature of the poverty there, and poverty in our country is very different. People here don’t have an infant and child and maternal mortality rate anywhere close to what they have there. The children and babies here don’t have bellies swollen with worms - parasites that take what little nutrients they have in their subsistence diets. Few children die of dysentery here. I never saw a goiter in my life before visiting the mountain villages. A member of our group, a health economist who taught at Gettysburg College ( Stanley would know about it) who had lived in other third world countries, returned to do testing of the people about their nutritional deficiencies. She wrote a whole book about the critical importance of a clean water source in poor countries. She knew that a dirty water supply and parasites often resulted in borderline retardation. She found that more than 1/3 of those she tested on cognitive abilities in the parish villages and towns we visited in the DR were below the official threshold for retardation, and the majority were lower than average IQ. The people were illiterate, and didn’t know their own ages or that of their children. When given the anti- parasite medication the nurses had to tell them when to take it by giving them sun markers - at dawn, at lunch , n the afternoon, after dark etc. the medication was the type that the number of daily pills each decreased over time. Since the people couldn’t read, it was complicated to explain to them how to use the medication properly. How to count days so that they could reduce how many pills to take. I looked around the villages and marveled at the cleanliness of these dirt villages, including the floors in the one room shacks - no trash. But then it hit me, they didn’t own things that go into the trash - nothing to throw away or create litter.
DeleteAmerican poverty can be pretty bad, but most people do have roofs over their heads, food stamps, Medicaid and access to medical care, access to education etc. Even the homeless on sidewalks can access soup kitchens and in DC volunteers also go out to the places they hide in the woods to give them sandwiches and other food. Nobody gives food to the poor in the DR mountains.
The biggest problems for America’s inner city poor are drugs and violence. For rural poor in places like Appalachia it’s drugs and hopelessness. But they aren’t starving and seem to have money for cigarettes, booze, phones, cable tv and video games.
The third world poor have extreme material poverty, life threatening. The first world poor have very different problems.
So, poor Americans are violent and blow their money on dope, cigs, booze, phones, and video games. If they're hurting, it's their own damn fault. I guess MAGA is right to cut programs to all those lazy louts.
DeleteJean, Jean, Jean. Don't always be so defensive. I'm not talking about you, nor your precarious financial position, nor about most Americans who may need assistance. I am referring to the poor who are stuck in violent inner cities, and have to worry about walking down their own street, fighting their way past the drug sellers in their apartment complexes - mostly good people caught in a terrible situation, and to the poor in places like Appalachia who seem to have no hope, not enough hope to even try. But the reality is this - No American is materially poor the way the people in third world poverty are poor. The poverty of some trapped in poverty in violent inner city neighborhoods or trapped in hopelessness in rural communities is not so much material as spiritual. They lose hope. THey lose faith in God. The people in the DR that I met are the most faith-filled people I've ever met. That gives them hope, even as they watch their babies die because they have no clean drinking water. The people I met and visited in the DR (and those Pope Leo visited in Peru) would look at you as being unimaginably rich, beyond their wildest dreams. You have access to healthcare, are highly educated, more than one set of clothing, a real bed instead of a mat on the dirt floor, have a home, have food, have a car, have furniture, have cooking utensils, and plates and glasses, have an indoor toilet, have electricity, have running water - clean running water that doesn't fill your belly with worms,.
DeleteThe poor in Appalachia sometimes have a different mindset than those in the cities, one that I admit that I sometimes don't get (even after reading Vance's book) and their lack of education often means that they really don't know how to spend the money they do have to improve their quality of life. I was involved for a year with an abstinence education progam meant to keep girls not pregnant and in high school. The programs were mostly in the cities, but a few were in rural sites, including on a native American reservation and one in Clay County, Kentucky. I had several interesting and educational conversations with the school nurse who ran the program in Kentucky. She came to DC once so it was much easier to learn from her. Usually I corresponded with the program heads via email and phone. It was eye opening, just as going to the DR was eye opening. I was also involved with a program that would help those unemployed because the jobs moved overseas apply for jobs, interviews, and get retraining for good, new jobs. I know that very few took advantage of these opportunities, that most of the computers were unused, that the free training was turned down. It was very discouraging. Why? These people vote for trump but I'm not sure why because he plans to get rid of most of the programs that help keep them going. They complain incessantly about the loss of good jobs, but won't take advantage of the opportunities that could help them get a good job in a different industry. I mostly did ecnomics over the years, but as a freelancer I took any job that came my way, so I was exposed to situations up close and peronal, and learned the realities in ways that don't come across when simply reading the data.
I'm sorry if you have taken offense at my wording, but no offense is intended. I'm simply trying to convey the economic and life realities of the third world poor, and try to clumsily explain the differences between third world poverty and first world poverty. I see it as overwhelming material poverty in the global south but more of a spiritual poverty in the developed countries. Nobody in America is going to starve to death unless they choose to. Their kids aren't going to die from intestinal parasites, or malnutrition, but they might die from drugs, or guns, or other violence. I'm sorry I'm not able to make my point clear on this matter.
Francis and Leo are trying to draw attention to the global poor, to the starving in many countries, to the millions in the world who are living in tents in refugee camps, and also to the desparate people fleeing to America just to try to make a better life for their families.
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DeleteLong sad blah blah deleted.
DeleteWill close this by saying that you've seen some shocking poverty in the D.R., and that level of poverty is, of course, terrible. But istm that that experience has given you ammo to criticize American poor people because you've never seen any with worms and goiters.
Poverty can affect someone's access to shelter, basic utilities, health care, diet, educational levels, job prospects, longevity, and sense of worth without their living in a war zone or in a country plagued by drought.
Yes, poor people in the US can have trouble accessing all of those things. And maybe they feel badly that they are struggling so. But there is literally a world of difference. There are safety nets in the US - some provided by the governments and some provided by volunteer groups. I’m sorry, but the material poverty in poor third world countries is far worse than in the US. There are no safety nets, public or private.
DeleteMy husband is still recovering from the aspiration pneumonia and sepsis he experienced last Sunday. He had access to good care - IV antibiotics, good nursing care, and now oral antibiotics at home. He’s not back to normal yet but improving. If this happens to someone in one of those DR villages or others like them around the world, they would have died. If he hadn’t had access to good healthcare 25 months ago he would have been dead two years ago. He is recovering in a bed in a home with heat, electricity and clean water, not dying on a mat in a dirt floored one room shack. There is first world poor and there is third world poor and the difference in their lives is as vast as the ocean. Very few Americans are totally illiterate and public schools are available to every American. Not so in the poorest countries. Most of the villages had no schools. No teachers. The Catholic Church was trying to hire teachers to teach at least a school with four grades. If they hired and paid a teacher, the government would build a one room school room. But they wouldn’t pay a teacher. Health care is often inaccessible - even more now because of the loss of humanitarian aid from the US. Americans may often have poor diets nutritionally but they don’t starve to death. Longevity in these poor countries is years - even decades - less than in the developed countries. Sense of worth is not something the global poor achieve easily. The nuns from Spain insisted that the people pay for their medicines, even if it was only two onions. They did this to help preserve the peoples self worth. So they do have this concern too in common with the poor of the rich countries.
People sometimes ask me why my donations go mostly to international humanitarian groups It’s because I know so much about global poverty from my career. I donate also to Catholic Charities for their food bank in DC. But the poor in the DR and similar countries don’t drive into a parking lot with volunteers from Catholic Charities putting bags of groceries in the cars as they drive through. Some take busses. In the DR there is nobody handing out bags of food to the poor. There are no volunteers handing out sandwiches that other volunteers made. No soup kitchens. Just bare survival and a lot of premature deaths. I’m sorry that I am unable to explain this well enough. But it’s a subject I know a lot about from my career and care about passionately (the knowledge from data vividly illustrated by my trip to the DR) which is why I liked Francis and now Leo drawing attention to the poorest of the poor in the world. Poverty is a whole different reality for them.
I'm sure any money you send to the poor thru worthy organizations is money well spent.
DeleteWhat makes me bristle isn't where you choose to send your money but that seeing poverty abroad has lead you to wave away the American poor here as feckless, immoderate, and possibly ungrateful.
I would also suggest that the food banks, parking lot giveaways, SNAP, and other safety nets are not nearly as bountiful, easily accessed, or generous as you think.
But those are realities others here have not had to face. Pray you never do.
Jean, you are putting words in my mouth and imputing ideas to me that I have not expressed. Explaining the difference between third world poverty and first world poverty is simply describing reality. It is not judging anyone. The poor in America have resources to help them, both public and private. This is not true in many places. That’s reality. I’m sorry that it upsets you. I won’t say more because every time I do, my meaning apparently doesn’t get across clearly. I am sorry about that.
DeleteI laud your efforts at trying to help people in developing nations. You have every right to spend your money and prioritize needs as you see fit.
DeleteI do think there are aspects of American poverty that you have overlooked, oversimplified, and bright-sided.
Yep, that riles me up and makes me feel judged and dismissed on a very personal level. You feel you're a generous and compassionate person whose words and attitudes are being distorted.
I doubt anybody else here is paying attention to our spat, but it does illustrate the inability of haves and have-nots in this country to communicate.
Different understandings of poverty. My mother lost her home at age 55 and found a job at a conference center that included a bedroom in staff housing. I stayed with friends during holidays when the dorms were closed. I had two scholarships - one covered tuition and the other covered room and board. But technically I was homeless. No home to go to for Christmas or Thanksgiving or summer. I lived with my sister who was working in DC one summer. Growing up my mom stretched money for food - lots of beans. Lots of rice, lots of tuna noodle casseroles. Little meat - ground hamburger cooked with onion for something she called rice pilaf - emphasis on the rice. We ate a whole lot of rice. No chicken and little meat in general except for ground beef, stretched for spaghetti sauce or dishes like rice pilaf. There were no programs then - no SNAP, no Medicaid. We had no health insurance. I never went to a dentist until I was 17 - required for college. I got braces for my buck teeth after I was married, at age 26 . We did have a house - a small mountain cabin for seven family members in a 2 bedroom, 1 bath home of about 800 sq ft. Fortunately my eldest sister was in college, not home much, and my father was gone about 90% of the time, so only five of us most of the time. I didn’t grow up in luxury. I borrowed clothes from friends in my college for dances. I never had anything new growing up - handme downs from my two older sisters. I got two new outfits when I went to college - never previously worn by anyone. That was a real thrill and I still remember my excitement trying on clothes at the Sears in San Bernardino CA.
DeleteFortunately we kids were pretty healthy. But I did have emergency surgery at age 10 and a ten day hospitalization. I don’t know how she paid that bill. Maybe the nuns who ran our little 30 bed mountain hospital gave her a break. That’s what I suspect but will never know. Maybe the two doctors in our town did too. I don’t know.
I baby sat, but also started working for social security wages at age 13 every summer, 6 days/ week/ 10 hours/ day and winter weekends. Since 60 hour weeks were against the law for teenagers, we kids kept two time cards - one showed 40 hours/ week, the second (hidden from state authorities when they inspected) had the the extra hours. At the end of the summer season we teenage summer help were paid for extra weeks. I saved every penny with one exception - I saw an inexpensive florentine style plaque with the Prayer of St Francis and bought it out of my high school job savings. It sits on my dresser now. It’s one of my most precious possessions. My high school job savings became my spending money in college - books, shampoo, and other personal items, an occasional hamburger out with my friends. A couple of times my mother borrowed money from me to pay the mortgage or the tab at the local grocery store when she was going to be cut off. Of course she never had enough extra to repay me and I didn’t expect it.
So compared to my friends, I was poor growing up. My sisters and I got together with our husbands and bought my mom a condo to live in. Because by then we were all working professionals, college graduates, and we could afford to help her have a nice condo in a retirement community. For the ability to do that - enough money with pooled resources - I am forever grateful.
Compared to the poor in the global south, I was rich growing up.
It’s all relative.
Jean, I’m sorry that you are struggling financially. I gave my litany to show that I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My mom didn’t have access to programs available now to Americans resulting from Johnson’s War on Poverty. . The poor in the global south don’t either.
ReplyDeleteThere was a story in the NYT this morning about more than 150, 000 homeless kids. It’s tragic. But they still go to school. They are technically homelesss but they do have a roof over their heads and food. Apparently many live in shelters while others live in apartments crowded with two or three families. Most are black or Latino.
That is how my second son’s parents in law lived when they were first resettled in SN Francisco as refugees. Several families, no money, no English, living together in a small apartment in one of San Francisco’s worst neighborhoods. They had some assistance from the US government for a while. The adults got whatever minimal wage wotk they could. Eventually all the families moved into the working class, then the middle class. Some became truly wealthy - my son’s in- laws did. But they knew poverty in Viet Nam during the war, and here in the US, and even near starvation (in the refugee camp in Indonesia where my daughter in law was born). There are millions of refugees around the world now living as they did after being rescued fleeing Vietnam in a small boat and taken to Indonesia. I want to help today’s refugees because they need it desperately and the US is now only accepting white South Africans as refugees. Poverty is relative.
Our different understandings of global and domestic poverty will just have to remain different.
"It's tragic. But ..."
ReplyDeleteIt's the "but" that sticks in my craw, I guess. Poverty at all levels, in all its forms, for all its causes is tragic.
Details about my situation slip here sometimes because I'll never meet any of you. In real life it's a complete secret because admitting to poverty invites advice: "Why don't you do this? Why can't you do that? Why haven't you gone here for help? You should have done this. You paid too much for that. You made the wrong decision there. You should wait for sales."
If Americans can't fix a problem, they basically blame it on the person with the problem.
(Fwiw, see it in my cancer group, too: "You should visit a specialist, go to Cleveland, get in a drug trial, switch your meds, stop eating wheat, lower your stress, get a massage."
This gets internalized by a lot of people until they think they caused the cancer themselves. A woman whose cancer has moved to the next stage went off on herself just last week: "It's my own fault; I should have started taking X five years ago."
Gah! These blood cancers are so rare that even the researchers don't know what will make a difference. Took a while to talk her down.)
The point is that we live in a culture where weakness and vulnerability too often get blamed on the weak and vulnerable. And the weak and vulnerable are always being told how someone else has it so much worse. Like that's gonna make me feel better.
Yes there is a but - because all poverty is not the same. As bad as it can get here, it’s a lot worse elsewhere when there are no safety nets at all.
ReplyDeleteI’m sorry for what you’ve experienced with others. I never experienced it when going to my “rich bitch” women’s college ( that’s how the Loyola University brother school guys referred to us). Most of the girls came from upper middle to truly wealthy families. There were about eight of us on scholarship and I was the poorest of the eight. We scholarship girls formed a tight bond that has lasted our lifetimes, even though all of us also had rich friends. But the rich girls had cars, and they left campus every Friday to go home so that they could go out without having the midnight curfew at our out of the way Catholic womens college (called GU by the guys - geographically undesirable). The dorms were mostly deserted on weekends except for the poor girls without cars, and a few international students - super, duper rich with servants and clothes made from magazine photos sent to their private dressmakers. We weekend dorm rats spent a whole lot of time together playing bridge or watching tv. We didn’t go to movies very often because we had no cars to get to a movie, no public transportation, and no money anyway for frivolity. I never experienced the attitudes you describe nor did any of my poor scholarship friends, i was grateful for my rich friends’ willingness to lend me one of their wardrobe of evening gowns for formal dances. If my mother experienced what you describe she never let on. If there had been foodstamps etc she would have qualified, but those didn’t exist.So we ate a lot of rice and a lot of beans. As far as I know she didn’t experience negative judgments from her friends either, and she had many rich friends - her college sorority sisters with whom she had close friendships until she died. I know that at times she envied them their country club lifestyles, their gorgeous homes in the most expensive neighborhoods of Los Angeles, but I don’t think she ever experienced any of them looking down on her, at least not to her face.
I’m sorry that you feel judged for having a rare disease and for having less money than others. I wish I could help but I can’t help with either.
My husband may have a very rare and dangerous condition that may mean potentially life threatening surgery. We just got back from his follow up with his PCP after his hospitalization in Connecticut. He had also had some tests done before we went to NYC for his sister’s memorial service and we also got the results of those . More consultations with new specialists coming up. If the indications are validated with more tests it’s a condition that occurs in less than 1% of the population and requires dangerous and long surgery that he might not withstand because of his age and heart condition. But my husband would have died long ago had we been poor in the DR. I’m very grateful for Medicare and for access to good healthcare. We take each day one step at a time now. The weather is beautiful now, the trees have turned, the leaves are falling and we try to be grateful for those gifts too.
"I’m sorry that you feel judged for having a rare disease and for having less money than others. I wish I could help but I can’t help with either."
ReplyDeleteHeavens, do you honestly think I'm here to panhandle and you need to do an end run around it?? Sheesh!! At least let me get out my tin cup and "Will work for food" cardboard sign.
Seriously, I've made my points as best as I can. They don't tally with your experience, and this exchange threatens to devolve into some kind of lugubrious misery contest.
Will leave you to enjoy the nice weather, extend best wishes for your husband's continued care, and bow out.