Should I stay or should I go?

There are two types of people in the world: those who think sports are really interesting and important, and those who find the whole sports-fan culture to be in equal parts perplexing and annoying, and don't understand how people can be absorbed by, much less passionate about, the prospect of extra-tall boys, wearing short pants and tank tops with the school name emblazoned upon them, chasing around a ball in a gymnasium for a couple of hours.  And in my observation, for some reason, parish staffs, and especially people involved in liturgy, tend to have a disproportionate number of the latter type. 

Rachel Carson for Holy Saturday

Today, as Jesus harrows Hell and breaks a trail to Heaven, our thoughts turn to the Hereafter and what will happen to us. Will we experience the holy light of hope that Adam and Eve and all the prophets saw as Jesus crashed through the gates of death to usher them into heaven?

Today we may hope we are Heaven-bound, but maybe it's worth remembering that we can get there only through what we do here on earth.

In that spirit, I read this piece about Rachel Carson in the New Yorker. In our old Unitarian Church, starting indoor seedlings for the church garden and Rachel Carson were part of our Easter observances. The Easter season ended roughly when the seedlings had grown hardy enough to be planted outdoors in Michigan the first week of June.

While Carson was perhaps not particularly religious in a conventional sense, she was clearly awed by and in love with creation, and she spent her life studying and trying to defend it.

I remembered a quote of hers about christenings that I had heard in my young years, and spent most of this morning trying to find it. Without some innate and natural sense of God, how could she have written this, which now reads to me like a prayer:

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world would be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from our sources of strength.

You could certainly do worse than to ask for these blessings.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Sight seen last night

After yesterday evening's Holy Thursday service, our parish had Eucharistic Adoration until midnight.  Around here, there is a tradition among certain folks - perhaps certain ethnicities?  I've never quite pinned down who all does it - to travel around from church to church during that time of that particular evening; they pray before the Eucharist at each one.  So it's common to see individuals and families, strangers to our community, but of course they're welcome, trickling in and out throughout the evening.

Last night, it was taken to the next level: a tour bus, presumably with flat screens and WiFi, because it looked like that kind of a rig, pulled up, disgorged at least 25 people, and waited in the parking lot.  The folks who disembarked gathered around a statue of Mary, taking pictures with their cell phones, while a leader said things to them - it looked like a tour group at a museum.  Then they all trooped inside.  We were on our way out so that's all I can report.

I guess, if you're going to take part in that tradition, you might as well get it organized and travel in comfort. 

At any rate, it was a beautiful service for us.  I sang in the bass section.  Today I'm "on": already led Morning Prayer, am leading Stations at noon, will be there for one of my kids who is doing teen Living Stations later this afternoon, and then will be deacon for the Good Friday service this evening.  A most blessed and prayerful Triduum to all of us.

Good Friday Musings

This address, given by then Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 on Bl. John Duns Scotus at a  general audience, is worth reading:
"He says in his "Reportatio Parisiensis":  "To think that God would have given up such a task had Adam not sinned would be quite unreasonable! I say, therefore, that the fall was not the cause of Christ's predestination and that if no one had fallen, neither the angel nor man in this hypothesis Christ would still have been predestined in the same way" (in III Sent., d. 7, 4). This perhaps somewhat surprising thought crystallized because, in the opinion of Duns Scotus the Incarnation of the Son of God, planned from all eternity by God the Father at the level of love is the fulfilment of creation and enables every creature, in Christ and through Christ, to be filled with grace and to praise and glorify God in eternity. Although Duns Scotus was aware that in fact, because of original sin, Christ redeemed us with his Passion, Death and Resurrection, he reaffirmed that the Incarnation is the greatest and most beautiful work of the entire history of salvation, that it is not conditioned by any contingent fact but is God's original idea of ultimately uniting with himself the whole of creation, in the Person and Flesh of the Son." 

From an article by Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM:
"Scotus taught that the Enfleshment of God had to proceed from God’s perfect love and God’s perfect and absolute freedom (John 1:1-18)..."

And from piece by Jack Wintz, OFM:
"It’s a beautiful, developing drama, a beauty whose end we cannot see. Starting with the first day of creation, the Word of God—the co-eternal mirror of the Father—has been slowly emerging down the ages. The Word has become visible in the Incarnation and will reach its full revelation when Jesus returns in glory on the last day."

Many people struggle with some of the interpretations given to the life, and particularly the death of Jesus on the cross. Theologians such as Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, and Athanasius, not to mention people from the Reformation tradition such as Calvin and Luther; have wrestled with the theology of this intervention by God in human affairs.  It is a good day to reflect on these mysteries, and to realize that the theology is far from monolithic, though nearly all agree on the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sakes.  Personally it is a day to exist in the mystery, and ponder it; and also to realize that I will not fully understand it in this life, while realizing that it proceeds from the perfect love of the Trinity.

Nobody was driving, officer

 I am not a first user. I literally had to get a cell phone yesterday. It is my first, and I have no idea of how to work it. But I have been all in on driverless cars since I heard about them.

 Accordingly, I am not happy that Uber, which can't seem to do anything right lately, had a fatal crash in Arizona, which has suspended its efforts to make Volvos that can go without human help.  The governor of Arizona ginned up some political high dudgeon and banned further testing his his state.

Kosovo Again...

Has anyone been keeping up with these events?  The first I heard about it was this evening at Mass when the priest prayed for "...peace in the world, and for the situation in Kosovo."  I had thought a resolution of sorts had been reached several years ago. Nothing is ever really over, apparently.

A Tea Party of the Left?

Are Democrats getting their own Tea Party?  Several posts here at NewGathering have discussed the recent Democratic Illinois 3rd District Congressional primary, in which Dan Lipinski edged Marie Newman, who had primaried the incumbent Lipinski from the left.  Peggy's recent post on the race included a link to an interesting, if somewhat disorganized, post-mortem by David Weigel that appeared in the Washington Post, entitled, in part, "A Tea Party of the Left?" 

The second-most dangerous American

I wouldn't think that many NewGathering readers read George Will very regularly, but if I may, I recommend you read this column from a few days ago on the Trump Administration's bringing on John Bolton.   

Most of the news coverage of Bolton's nomination that I've seen has focused on what it says about turnover at the White House - the revolving door spinning like a house fan - along with some snarky yet perceptive comments about the correlation between whom the president trusts and their affiliation with Fox News.  Will calls attention to what policies Bolton may bring to the table, and offers some astute reasons to worry.  He calls out that Bolton was strongly in favor of the Iraq War and still today is wholly unrepentant about it. 

The shadow of Vietnam (which Will also invokes) has hung over our politics for 50+ years.  I wonder whether the invasion of Iraq will have a similar effect for the Gen Xers.  The Iraq War was approved on a somewhat bipartisan basis, including, if I'm not mistaken, by a Senate that at that time had a Democratic majority.  There were conservative voices that opposed it, but that wasn't reflected in Congress (and certainly not the White House).  I recall it as a strange and worrisome time - it seemed that war fever gripped our leaders.  Catholic social teaching's misgivings about war - even the just-war tradition, which contemplates the possibility of a war being declared justly, couldn't be pressed into service to countenance the invasion of Iraq - were raised by some voices, but didn't seem to be heard.

Loy-ooo-la-la!

Quick update on the Loyola Ramblers: the little school squeezed between the el tracks and the lake on Chicago's North Side has advanced to the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four.  "Unlikely" doesn't begin to describe it. 

Apparently getting bored with pulse-pounding, last-second-shot victories, the Ramblers changed it up this time by getting out to a 20 point lead against Kansas State and then stiff-arming them away from getting back into the game the rest of the way.  Not that it wasn't stressful.  Just different stress this time. 

You know how annoying Notre Dame fans are when their football team is any good?  I'm that guy tonight.  I beg your indulgence as this may be the only chance I get for the next 30 years.  But for the next week I'm going to enjoy this a lot.

Great Demonstrations Today

Upper West Side, NYC: Beautiful Day. Very Crowded subway. Very crowded streets. Cheerful people with babies, children, signs; as well as veterans of many marches. Good organization, especially it seems the police with good crowd control to expedite movement. Police also cheerful, even witty.

Will this and hundreds of other marches do anything? Don't know. But November elections beckon and these people will vote, in some places even the children.

AND...Loyola is going to the Final Four!!! Jerry Harkness from the '63 team in the front row!  Bravo....

Illinois 3rd Con. District: A Bellweather Discussion?

There's been an extensive discussion here (thanks to Jim Pauwels) of the Illinois election results, especially Illinois' 3rd Congressional District, in which the long-time incumbent Daniel Lipinski was vigorously opposed by newcomer, Marie Newman. He won by a small majority. That Lipinski won over the opposition of some of his Illinois Congressional colleagues and party officials is a contrast-story to Democrat Colin Lamb's win in Pennsylvania over a Republican in a very Republican district. Lamb and Lipinski look a lot alike, but it would be imprudent to say they will be since Lamb is a newbie; and Lamb's opponent was to his right; Lipinski's to his left.

Newman was the candidate of the Democratic Left. Lipinski was called a Trump Democrat, but those old enough to remembers would say he is what used to be the center of the Democratic Party.

Here's an analysis from a liberal perspective of where Newman went astray, and where she made inroads: interesting city/suburb, union/white collar, urban Democrats/suburban independents dynamics.

Local expert and the man who got Obama elected: David Axelrod: “Newman was trying to galvanize the progressive vote in the district, and I think her judgment was that stridency was the way to affect that.... I wouldn’t make that a template moving forward.”

Washington Post: A 'tea party of the left?'  (Note the question mark.)

The spending deal, DACA and Obamacare (and upcoming elections)

In the comments section of the Illinois election report post below, a discussion has broken out over the omnibus spending bill that Congress passed this week.

First of all, just to keep everyone up to date: President Trump has signed the deal, after threatening earlier to veto it, via Twitter naturally, very possibly after watching Fox & Friends, and apparently to the surprise of his own White House aides and his party's Congressional leadership.  A presidential veto would have triggered a government shutdown.

Russell Berman at The Atlantic website has posted an article which, while noting that the 2,000 page bill has bits and pieces sure to please many constituencies, takes a look at two major opportunities that got away: fixes for DACA and Obamacare.  Given the president's focus on immigration issues, it's perhaps not surprising that a number of news accounts have focused on the DACA negotiations.  But the Obamacare deal, or lack thereof, is interesting in its own right.

Old-adult fiction: "Go, Went, Gone"

I plan to retire at the end of May, but am trying to keep my hand in the game with a survey of old-adult fiction, inspired by my last lit class, Young-Adult Literature.

Toward that end, this year's reading consists of works in which all the protagonists are at least 50. The project has garnered some interest among my online book club friends. There are some excellent books in their recommendations. One that stands out is Jenny Erpenbeck's 2017 novel, "Go, Went, Gone" (translated from the German).

Cautionary tales: campaign division

The flood of news about Cambridge Analytica's use of Facebook data is beginning to unleash tongues with stories of ever more far-reaching interference in national elections.

The Guardian has this story about Nigeria's 2015 election.    SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company was hired by a wealthy Nigerian to help defeat Muhammadu Buhari the opposition candidate running against incumbent (and memorably named) Goodluck Jonathan, who was favored to win. In fact, Buhari won.

Politico has this background story      on Cambridge Analytica that includes new info on the Facebook data heist: the "Cambridge academic," who was given the data trove, is Russian-born and was actually a University of St. Petersburg somebody, or maybe nobody.

As usual, I would read all of this with a cup of salt...still, suggests how devious the fake campaign business can get.

Illinois election report [Updates]

Illinois held its primaries for both Democrats and Republicans yesterday.

Now and Forever: The Art of Medieval Time

The following was submitted by Bob Ginsberg, a reader and occasional commenter here.

Anyone who is interested in the history and influence of the Church in the Middle Ages will be fascinated by the exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York City titled Now and Forever: The Art of Medieval Time.  The idea of the exhibit is to show how the Church’s concepts of history and of time permeated all aspects of life, including thoughts and activities.  Included in the exhibit are extraordinary examples of church calendars and secular calendars (hard to tell apart) and Books of Hours that are beautiful in themselves but also evocative of daily life.  The exhibit is described on the Morgan website.  It ends on April 29th.

NCR gets it. But it's doubtful that many others do

How many years have the PTB been wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth over the loss of tens of millions of Catholics in the US?  And in Europe? And increasingly in Latin America?

How many years have the PTB tried to come up with programs and gimmicks, new liturgies and old liturgies,  to keep people, especially the young adults, in the pews?

How many years have they refused to look in a mirror.

How many years have they refused to examine their collective conscience to see how they and the doctrines they hold onto as if they were "Truth" - rather than doctrines that very often reflected the cultures of earlier eras - to see how these doctrines have driven and continue to drive people from the church, especially the young.

For years they have blamed everything and everyone but themselves.  Ultimately they blame those who leave. Blame the victim, Catholic church style.

NCR recognized this years ago. Now there is to be a new program, a Synod no less, and there was a sort of kick-off conference at Notre Dame with Barron as a key speaker. Barron!   So the young neo-cons, the young Latin mass types will cheer, and the rest will just continue to head out the doors.

This is NCR's editorial

Editorial: Young people are not the problem

by NCR Editorial Staff

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If the recent conference at the University of Notre Dame [1] — where speakers postulated reasons for young people's disassociation from the Catholic Church — represents the approach going into the upcoming Synod of Bishops on young people, we would beg church officials to postpone the gathering.

What we heard was a familiar litany, placing blame for missing young people on:

• Technology — specifically youths' obsession with smartphones — which supposedly robs them of the contemplative mind and makes them "suckers for irrelevancy."
• An aversion to "orthodoxy," a term the user brandished with the certainty that his strain of orthodoxy is the immutable version of the truth.
• The "dumbing down of our faith."
• The pervasiveness of pornography and relativism, of course.
• And a new danger — the "bland toleration" of diversity, a curious addition.

According to this analysis, it is the young people, not the church, who are in crisis. By this analysis, the very institution that young people find so wanting that they have nothing to do with it nonetheless knows all of the questions and has all of the answers. This analysis imagines a "kairos moment" when scales fall from young eyes that no longer gaze at screens nor at pervasive porn as they become aware of their deficiencies and their state of crisis.


What a self-satisfying assessment. And what a relief. It isn't that healthy young people might be repulsed by the way that church leaders mishandled the sex abuse crisis for decades. Nor is it the money scandals or callousness toward gay and lesbian Catholics or the bishop-driven one-issue politics that has reduced religion and faith to a bumper sticker in the culture wars
.
No, they say, the problem lies with young people who have acquired culturally influenced defects.
The cultural critique has value, of course, and the disaffection of young people from all manner of institutional involvement — from the local symphony orchestra to the Rotary Club — needs continued examination to figure out how institutions can be relevant to young people.

While dwindling numbers of Catholics are no doubt due to some extent to these social forces, there is much more to consider in the case of the church. Before becoming too convinced that the reason for the disaffection lies with everything and everyone else, church leaders need to seriously examine how their own shortcomings and failures have contributed to young people leaving the church.
It is reasonable to understand that teens and young adults, living in a civil culture that increasingly accepts their LGBT friends and family members, find unacceptable the intolerance and outright discrimination of some Catholic officials and organizations.

It is understandable that a young person would rather not be part of an institution that preaches God's mercy but shows little mercy toward divorced and remarried parents.
Young people, especially young women, who know how their mothers and grandmothers struggled to gain equality in the wider culture, don't care to become involved in an institution where women are marginalized. What can they think of an institution that bars women from its most important deliberative bodies while women hold the vast majority of ministry positions in parishes and dioceses?

Is it surprising that young women might avoid an institution where only men are ordained to preside over the community's most profound moments?
Isn't it also reasonable, speaking of vocations to the priesthood, that parents might hesitate to encourage their sons to join a clerical culture that has been depleted not only in numbers, but also in credibility and moral standing?

Could it be that only the tiniest representation of young people will be attracted to parishes and dioceses dominated by legalists and doctrinal "rigorists"?

Fear no longer works to fill the pews or keep people compliant. The people of God are looking for inspiration. The young — all of us really — are looking for authenticity. Examples of people who walk the faith and live the heart of the Gospel are more convincing than hours of apologetics and glitzy presentations on up-to-date delivery platforms.

Unless church leaders at the highest levels thoroughly examine how our community became so distorted — corrupt like a white sepulcher — a synod about attracting younger members will ultimately prove a waste of time and effort.

Perhaps the breathless pursuit of young people in its embarrassing obviousness should be set aside to give church leaders time for deep reflection on what it means to be authentically humble. Replace fanciful answers to questions few are asking with a simple sign, containing one line, in each bishop's office: "You may be the problem."

https://www.ncronline.org/print/news/opinion/editorial-young-people-are-not-problem

Happy Birthday to Us

I just thought I would note here that NewGathering is now one year old (plus a few days), the first post having appeared March 9, 2017.

Thanks to all the contributors, commenters, and readers!

Meanwhile, back at Commonweal ...

... the email blast I get from the magazine called out that Commonweal is going on the road.  The magazine has scheduled a series of three Commonweal Conversations:

• April 30 in New York: Anthony Domestico in conversation with Christian Wiman
• May 11 in "Bay Area, CA" (venue is still TBD): Matthew Sitman in conversation with Dorothy Fortenberry and Kaya Oakes
• May 29 in Chicago: Dominic Preziosi in conversation with Cardinal Cupich

If you're interested, you can register at the link in the first paragraph.  Seems to be a free event.  I registered for the Chicago event.  If anyone is present, or lurking, who would like to come and meet me in Chicago, I can promise you that I am less scary in person.  I'm all about the face-to-face interaction, much to the delight of one or two of our regulars and, I think, the consternation of some others :-).  And if it's over a cold and frosty one, we're getting even closer to my conception of what heaven must be like.  Or if shaking my hand is more than you want to deal with but you are still interested in the event content, go ahead and stay anonymous and we'll see each other there only not realize it.

The Ramblers' secret weapon [Updated]

Those of you of (ahem) a certain age may recall that Loyola University of Chicago won the NCAA men's basketball national championship in 1963.  Since reaching the peak of the mountain 55 years ago, it has been mostly valleys for the Ramblers.

Someday we'll be sorry

 Some day, when and if the country comes back to its senses, it will be ashamed of what it let the Immigration and Customs Inforcement Service get away with during the Great Immigration Scare. It bothers my conscience that my grandchildren won't be able to say I fought it at the time, but I am old and so are my sources, and my megaphone isn't what it was.
 So I will burden you, briefly.
 The sins of ICS are reported sketchily and piecemeal -- the 7-year-old and her asylum-seeking mother separated and detained 2,000 miles apart, the solid citizens of many years' standing whose communities try to stand up for them while the agents carry them away. But this is an organization that probably shouldn't exist, and if it is needed, it has to undergo a thorough cultural change if it is to function in a free country. In The Week, Ryan Cooper pulled together a rap sheet to support the headline "End Ice."
 It's worth a read. More media should get on it.
 Even during the Obama administration, before the climate turned favorable for swaggering while armed, I was hearing from police chiefs and deputy sheriffs that their agencies did not like working with ICE. The people ICE take into custody rarely see a rigorous court, only overworked jumped-up magistrates, and its rare for them to have a defense attorney. As a result, other law enforcement sources say, they make lots of errors and lousy cases.
 Law enforcement qualms are one of the many motivations for so-called sanctuary city ordinances.
 Of course, since I was hearing that, the restraints have come off.
 Like torture, unfettered immigrant-bashing during the Great Immigration Scare is something that will go into our history books with Palmer's Red Raids of the early 1900s and the McCarthyism of mid-century as an embarrassment to future Americans. But this one can be stopped before it does more harm.

Do the Nuremberg Rules Apply? MORE

Gina Haspel has been named to head the CIA as its current director moves to the State Department. Both must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The Guardian has published an article that reports all that may be publicly known, at this point, about Gina Haspel's role as the CIA officer in charge of a black site prison in Thailand and her role in destroying records thereof.

Let us return to the days when the U.S. government tortured prisoners after 9/11.

In a recent court case, two psychologists, who devised the interrogation methods used at CIA-run black sites, attempted to depose Gina Haspel. The case produced a number of documents redacted, presumably by the CIA, that resulted in her being named as the CIA officer in charge of a site in Thailand.

There seems to have been little curiosity about her when Trump named her deputy director of the CIA early in 2017. Now as Mike Pompeo, the current director, moves on to the State Department, Haspel has been nominated to succeed him. Both must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Let's see if the Senate examines the reported role she played.

Among other points in the Guardian story, there is this from the two psychologists:
"She [Gina Haspel] had “direct, first-hand knowledge of the extent of defendants’ involvement in the development of interrogation efforts”, and was “in a position to confirm that defendants never engaged in any interrogation activities that had not been previously and specifically approved in advance by the CIA on a case-by-case basis”.

Of note: in her photo run with the Guardian's story she looks like your mother's best friend.

UpDAte:  Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review writes a defense of Haspel; we are likely to hear more of this kind of argument in the coming weeks.

From Karen Greenberg, director of Fordham Law's Center on National Security and author of books on national security, torture and Abu Ghraib: Gina Haspel's CIA nomination ignores her history of torture and sets a dangerous precedent. NBC 

MORE: A correction of dates when Haspel was in charge of the Thai torture site, Pro Publica.****As far as I can make out the correction does not include claims that she oversaw torture there at a later date and that she later destroyed evidence. Stay tuned for the confirmation hearings, where I am assuming there will be a mudding effort to show that what she did was legal, and that agents like Haspel, and others, were assured by authorities that they were legal. We are going to see a lot of tooing and froing on the legality question (which is, if your boss says so, it's okay). The U.S. didn't accept that from the Germans and Israel didn't accept it from Eichman. So why would it be okay for the GW Bush Administration.

"A little remembered footnote in American diplomatic history" (Updated)

Rex Tillerson was fired last Friday, although apparently he didn't learn about it until today.   True to form, the President informed his Secretary of State of the decision at the same time he informed the rest of us, via Twitter.  Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post gives us an unsentimental review of the Tillerson era.

UPDATE 3/13/2018 11:48 pm: in a move that the Post describes as "collateral damage"

Steve Goldstein, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, ... was swiftly fired for contradicting the White House's version of events [of Tillerson's termination].

There is something amusing, or fitting, or something, about a public relations officer being fired by the Trump Administration for truth-telling.

Faithless shepherds, and silent ones

 Like so many Americans, Michael Gerson – former speech writer for George W. Bush, fellow Wheaton College alum of the late Billy Graham – is not happy about what Donald J. Trump has done to this country. He is also unhappy about the monkeys Trump is making of conspicuous leaders of  Evangelicalism, of which Gerson is a proud but increasingly uncomfortable part.

In his email feed, Jim McCrea called attention to Gerson’s current Atlantic magazine article.  It is long but worth it. It is both a brief history of evangelicals in America and a cri de coeur from Gerson, who hopes fellow evangelicals will find it in their hearts to renounce Trump and all his works and all his empty promises.
 

He asks how evangelicals associate themselves with such revolting lulus as this one (which I had missed) from the Rev. Jerry Falwell: “Complaining about the temperament of the @POTUS or saying his behavior is not presidential is no longer relevant. He has single-handedly changed the definition of what behavior is ‘presidential’ from phony, failed & rehearsed to authentic, successful & down to earth.” Somehow, Gerson doesn’t think that excuses Trump's gutter language, the cringe-worthy comment about the bedableness of his daughter and self-publicized infidelities.

Gerson is eminently readable, especially when he is as angry as he is here, but I would like to call attention to a comment he makes about the Catholic Church.  As often happens, an outsider sees us exemplifying what we can only wish were true.

PA-18: A Lamb on the block UPDATE

A lot of attention is being paid to Tuesday's (3/13) election in Pennsylvania's 18th congressional  district. Colin Lamb, the Democratic candidate, looked a long-shot when this special election was called. Now it looks nip and tuck.

Here is a shortish piece about him and the campaign by Eliza Griswold, who among other books, has written about Western Pennsylvania's dying coal and growing gas fracking industry.  She describes the kind of voters the Democrats need to win back. Even if Lamb wins, I wonder if they have the brains and insight to go after these kind of voters. 
At the New Yorker.  

Here's the election take at the NYTimes.   Scroll down for a more granular take on the union vote, and divisions among Democratic voters, potential and actual.

UPDATE: Maybe more than you want to know: Here's 538 on PA-18 special election .

The spirit of the law

This is my homily for this weekend, the 4th Sunday of Lent.  This year we are in Cycle B (the Mark / John cycle of readings), but because of RCIA, our parish is using the Cycle A readings for the Scrutiny Sundays.  So this homily refers to the story of the man born blind, and the Old Testament reading from 1 Samuel in which Samuel visits Jesse of Bethlehem and anoints David as king.

On Getting It Wrong

Once in a while I find myself in agreement with columnist Jonah Goldberg. This wasn't one of those times.  From his column on the subject of the Parkland survivors:

"Think about what you knew and understood at half your current age. Were you smarter then? Wiser? Why assume it works differently for anyone else?"

U.S. Navy visits Vietnam

A friend in DC writes and sends a video clip from a newspaper.

"Okay, all those gripes  about U.S. military bands having budgets larger than Peace Corps (true!) is forgotten, Check out the video below on a Vietnamese newspaper web site. As you may know, a US Navy war ship tied up in Da Nang this week, the first port call by a US navy ship since 1975, and all the nerdy types who follow Vietnamese politics are trying to figure out what it means, especially vis a vis China. 

"But, as you can see if you click on the video in the text below,  this little U.S. Navy band played and some sailor sang in faultless Vietnamese a very popular nationalist song written by Vietnam’s most famous folk song/protest song writer who had the distinction of being imprisoned by both the South VN government and then by the North Vietnamese after 1975.  Anyway the vision of this chubby American sailor singing perfect Vietnamese is just beyond belief. It would be like a Chinese sailor entertaining Americans by singing Bruce Springsten or Bob Dylan."

Peggy:  Sorry about the DELAY..I can't figure out how to post the video, but scroll down slightly from the masthead of the paper and click on the image there. Fun to watch, especially the crowd.

Giving is trickier than receiving

 Like most of us, Cathleen Kaveny has to   shovel out a few feet of charity appeals to get to her Christmas cards each December. She wrote a a column for Commonweal trying to find some sort of triage for the begging letters, and came up with a three-box system for faith, hope and charity.  She didn’t find, alas, a simple standard for deciding which envelopes to take from each box and return with a check.

 She was not seeking a definitive solution to Everyperson’s charity challenges, but she did strike glancing blows on two arms of the octopus. I thought it might be interesting to add a few words on them. First, when charity flows seems to be dependent on the tax code at least as much as on Charles Dickens. Second, as Kaveny says, “(I)n some cases it may be morally preferable to give $1,000 in after-tax dollars to a needy family in your parish than make a $1,500 donation to a registered charity.” The first “family” that came to my mind is the army that bivouacs road medians at the traffic lights, with or without hand-lettered cardboard signs.

Teacher solidarity in West Virginia [Updated]

I expect all of us would agree that teaching is a profession, and that teachers are entitled to wages that befit a profession.  Catholic social teaching insists that employers have a responsibility to pay workers a living wage.  We also could note that there are few roles in society that have a greater impact on individual and social well-being and prosperity than that of teacher.

All of these are compelling reasons to pay teachers adequately.

The Rohingya Crisis Revisited

The slow-motion agony of the Rohingya people continues, perhaps somewhat abated by international attention, including the recent visit by Pope Francis. It would be useful to examine the roots of the crisis. In legalese terms, "Cui bono?" Who benefits now, or has benefitted in the past, from the disenfranchisement and victimization of the Rohingya?  Turns out there is quite a list, from an article in The Nation by Kraisak Choonhavan.  The first in the lineup would be the colonial British government of the 19th century, which rather cynically played various ethnic groups against one another to maintain control. When India and Myanmar gained their independence, the UK left behind the problems. In some ways, the present trouble is a sequela of colonialism, even though it is over 70 years in the past. More recently countries in Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand and Malaysia, have engaged in human trafficking of the Rohingya, who have the "...dubious distinction of being one of the most heavily trafficked people in the world."
And of course, always follow the money: from an article about the oil economics and land grab politics behind Myanmar's refugee crisis. The prime beneficiary of the land grabs from the disenfranchised people is Myanmar itself, and countries which have "..long eyed its resources, such as China and India....

Take your station

Each Friday evening during Lent, and a couple of times on Good Friday, my parish celebrates the Stations of the Cross.  This is, of course, a pretty traditional Catholic devotion, and I happen to think it's one of the better ones.  As long as it's done the way I like it.

Apropos of church unity

This morning at 11 AM Mass, the entrance hymn was "The Church's One Foundation." Came home to discuss the unity issue here again only to find the hymn itself all over the place. This morning's version had music by Purcell. How could you go wrong with him? The words weren't so great, but what the h... you can hum along. Now I see from a quick survey that the words we used weren't standard.

Here's the original, (by S.J. Stong, 1866) observing a division between the C of E and the C of South Africa.

Here's a not-very-good YouTube with complaints of  dropped stanzas. And Another with a very badly over-orchestrated version from Duke University Chapel
  
Whatever Jesus hoped for, the Church's earthly foundation seems to lean toward diversity! 

He Said What?!

Just when you think you've heard it all, Trump comes out with something like this:

"In the closed-door remarks, a recording of which was obtained by CNN, Trump also praised China's President Xi Jinping for recently consolidating power and extending his potential tenure, musing he wouldn't mind making such a maneuver himself.

"He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great," Trump said. "And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot some day."

The remarks, delivered inside the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate during a lunch and fundraiser, were upbeat, lengthy, and peppered with jokes and laughter. But Trump's words reflected his deeply felt resentment that his actions during the 2016 campaign remain under scrutiny while those of his former rival, Hillary Clinton, do not."

 

The remark about being "president for life" seems to be a really lame attempt at being funny.  But why would he even say it?  The filters between his brain and his mouth must have been turned completely off yesterday.

And "crickets" from the constitutional purists in Trump's party.  Imagine if Obama had said something similar, in jest.

 

The Joys of the Free Market

Are you surprised to find out that Delta Airlines (and perhaps others) offers NRA members a discount on their tickets? Does that mean the rest of us are supporting the NRA discount with our over-priced tickets?

Last week, in response to the murders in the Florida high school and the student protests, Delta withdrew the discount. In retaliation:  "Georgia lawmakers approved a bill on Thursday that stripped out a tax break proposal highly coveted by Delta Air Lines — the most stinging punishment that America’s pro-gun forces have leveled so far on one of the many corporations recalibrating their positions on firearms ...."

The tax break on sales tax for fuel is worth $50,000,000 to Delta (and would probably mean higher taxes for the citizens of Georgia). Will Delta cave to the Georgia Republicans. Or will Delta retaliate and raise the price of tickets for the residents of Georgia and NRA members to make up that 50 Mil?  Or?

But wait there's more: "In addition to being one of Georgia’s biggest employers, Delta is the economic engine of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, the busiest airport in the world and a bragging point in the city’s claim to national and even international stature."

Stay tuned.   NYTIMES.