Update 1/10/2023 3:40 pm CST: the Morning Dispatch newsletter from this morning does a deeper dive on the Biden administration's new immigration policies. At the bottom of the post, I've pasted some of the content from their analysis.
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The bishop of El Paso criticizes US immigration policies, and calls for us to do more.
Journalist Chris Hedges was recently interviewed on C-SPAN program In-Depth.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?524629-1/depth-chris-hedges
It is a two-hour program with call-ins after 45 minutes. Hedges discusses his views on war and America as an empire in decline. Strangely enough, this is his first interview on C-SPAN in eleven years, despite being a prolific writer about the American society and its actions throughout the world. I guess it's his "radicalism". But Hedges is an ordained Presbyterian minister. Daniel Berrigan baptized his youngest child. Hedges is not just a writer of jeremiads, although I think he is very good at that. He teaches college level courses in the New Jersey prison system. He obviously loves his students and treasures the work they do for his classes. One of the call-ins is one of his students who also fought to establish the Rutgers program.
In addition to his life experience as a war correspondent , Hedges has an extensive knowledge of literature and the classics. His books lay bare the seemingly insurmountable problems in our world. He is no optimist but no cynic either. Cynicism is only an excuse to roll up in a ball and do nothing. No matter the odds of success and failure, there is a moral imperative to do good things. And there are people doing them.
Some interesting things are happening at the state level on speakership
A few days ago, when it was announced that Pope Emeritus Benedict was ailing, Jack posted some predictions of how the media might assess Benedict's legacy. Benedict died a day or two later, and Jack updated the post accordingly. In the Comments section, we've been discussing Benedict's legacy. One of those legacy-defining topics is Benedict's handling of the Good Friday intercession for Jewish people.
In this post, I've gathered the texts of five different versions of that intercession. All five versions have, at one time or another, been approved for use in Catholic worship. I'm posting this information, in part, to keep the timelines and contents straight in my own mind. But I hope this may be helpful for others who are interested in this topic. It might provide one way to track the institutional church's progress in its relations with Jewish people, and how those relations are reflected in Catholic worship.
Rocco Palmo in his blog Whispers in the Loggia has done what he saw a Newpaper reporter in his hometown do for politicians, tell the complex human story behind political figures, in his case bishops.
I regard bishops as basically church politicians who make all the political decisions that civic politicians make. I don't know any bishops personally just as I don't know any politicians personally. I have read Rocco's blog to keep in my mind the human beings that are behind church politics.
When Benedict resigned, Rocco reprinted a talk that B16 had given to a group of elderly people a few months before his resignation. The talk is remarkable in that Benedict was actually talking about the kind of life that he had already decided he would begin to live in a few months.
The talk is even more remarkable now that he has completed a decade of such a life. Even though he had many visitors, for the very active life he had led as a Cardinal and Pope it much have been much like the life that we have experienced during the pandemic (not being able to do or go to the places that you once were able to do). The life of prayer that he was recommending to the elderly was the life that he would live for more years that he was pope.
So, as we ponder the meaning of his life, it is well to remember that for the last decade he has shared the life of the elderly that most of us sooner or later will experience.
