All in

This is my homily for today, the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B.  The readings for today are here.  I just want to say a quick word of thanks to Gene Palumbo, who has gone way out of his way to give me at least some very rudimentary knowledge of El Salvador, its awful civil war and the martyrs it created - and then also provided some fact-checking and editorial corrections to the homily text.  I apologize to Gene and to all of you if I've made any factual errors in what follows.

Finding Peace Through Nature

The current issue of the St. Anthony Messenger, which I subscribe to, had an article entitled Nature's Cathedrals, by Barbara Hughes.  It spoke to me as an antidote to the current toxic overload of dysfunctional politics, be it on the national scene, or ecclesial. Unfortunately it is behind a pay wall, and I can't link to it. But I will quote from the relevant parts:

Another Vigano letter

Archbishop Vigano fired another shot across Pope Francis's bow yesterday, releasing another letter with one or two new details and some additional charges.  Rod Dreher has provided the text in English.  This letter is considerably shorter than the first one, but if you don't want to read the whole thing, Crux highlights the parts sure to stir controversy.   Among them:

Ragnarok

Yesterday's Judiciary Committee hearing was Wagnerian in length and intensity--I watched it gavel-to-gavel--and the ending was similar: Ragnarok, or the twilight of American political culture.

American political culture has been in decline for decades. I watched the Anita Hill hearings, at which senators were merely disdainful or dismissive about nuisance comments made by Clarence Thomas to female co-workers. Yesterday's hearing was a display of unbridled rage at one woman, Sen. Diane Feinstein, and complete disregard for the testimony of a sexual assault victim, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

Sen. Jeff Flake's one-minute call for a return to civility seemed almost laughable in the midst of yesterday's awfulness. And it rings hollow given Flake's support for Kavanaugh. UPDATE: Flake called for a one-week delay for an FBI investigation, which seems to be where things are going, though Trump will have to order the investigation, so who knows?

Ten things that made me ashamed of American politics at yesterday's hearing:

Kavanaugh predictions, prognostications, and observations

Kavanaugh/Ford hearings will be covered live at 10 a.m. tomorrow on PBS. Assuming you're not totally burned out by all this stuff, where will you be watching?

Anybody want to make predictions about what will transpire as the Judiciary Committee questions Ford and Kavanaugh?

Anybody want to comment on the proceedings in real time? Feel free to do it here.

If it's another really nice fall day, I'm not sure if I'll be in front of the tube or sitting in my lawn chair watching the squirrels. Or maybe I'll find it streaming online and watch it on my tablet in my lawn chair with the squirrels doing commentary.

So far, Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) had the pithiest comment on this whole debacle:

Up or down, yes or no, however this vote goes, I am confident in saying that it will forever be steeped in doubt. This doubt is the only thing of which I am confident in this process.

His speech in the Senate is worth reading.

Are you a Democratic Socialist? Is Francis? Are Catholics?

I'm a sucker for quizzes like this one, even if they have nothing to do with politics, religion or Catholic Social Teaching.  But this one, as it happens, does.  My conclusion is that Catholic Social Teaching is the Democratic Socialist platform.  What do you think?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/22/us/politics/what-is-democratic-socialism.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_up_20180924&nl=upshot&nl_art=3&nlid=87407961emc%3Dedit_up_20180924&ref=headline&te=1

Upside down car

Sorry about the poor quality of that picture.  I took it with my cell phone a few minutes ago.  It's late on Sunday evening.  I was sitting at my computer here in my home office at about 11:15 pm when I heard a series of loud thumps and smacks outside.

Tribal warfare

As discussed below Andrew Sullivan on the current struggle to understand and cope with the interconnection between the Supreme Court and "boys will be boys."

At New York Magazine.

"...Our society has less crime and less danger than ever, and yet we see threats everywhere. It has become more racially and culturally diverse than any society in the history of humankind, but it is plagued by “white supremacists” or “hordes of illegals.” And you cannot question these feelings because subjectivity is more important than objectivity, and sensitivity trumps reality. Gay, lesbian, and transgender people live in a world unimaginable to the overwhelming majority of humankind, and to our predecessors of only five years ago, and yet we are told by our leaders that we are “under siege.” As women kick ass in our economy and culture, as they achieve success that previous generations would have thought extraordinary, what is the response? Rage, of course! Furious rage!"

ICE will think about it some more

 The 48-year-old deaf and disabled guy who has been in this country since he was 12 got a 30-day reprieve from our ever-sensitive Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. ICE says it needs to think about sending the guy to certain pain and agony and, probably, death. It has to be a tough decision for the bureaucrats with badges.
 There seem to be a number of people in Michigan who think the decision to let him stay ought to be a slam dunk. But none of them report to a crazy guy with a Twitter account.
 Just keeping you up to date, since I made a stink about this case earlier.  We shall see where the scales of justice fall. Or fail, as the case may be.

WSJ Editorial on Brett Kavanaugh

Much as I don't want Brett Kavanaugh (or any Trump appointee) on the Supreme Court, I am afraid I find more than one thing to agree with in the Wall Street Journal editorial "The Presumption of Guilt," from which this is an excerpt (including the two quotes that follow):

“As Judge Kavanaugh stands to gain the lifetime privilege of serving on the country’s highest court, he has the burden of persuasion. And that is only fair.”

—Anita Hill, Sept. 18, 2018

“Not only do women like Dr. Ford, who bravely comes forward, need to be heard, but they need to be believed.”

—Sen. Maize Hirono (D., Hawaii)

The last-minute accusation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is an ugly spectacle by any measure. But if there is a silver lining, it is that the episode is providing an education for Americans on the new liberal standard of legal and political due process. 

As Ms. Hill and Sen. Hirono aver, the Democratic standard for sexual-assault allegations is that they should be accepted as true merely for having been made. The accuser is assumed to be telling the truth because the accuser is a woman. The burden is on Mr. Kavanaugh to prove his innocence. If he cannot do so, then he is unfit to serve on the Court.

***

Quick thoughts on the Kavanaugh / Ford imbroglio - Update

Update 9/20/2018 2:48 pm ET:  The Washington Post has sent out a news alert: "Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford seeks to negotiate conditions under which she would testify next week.  In an email to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a lawyer for Ford said a hearing on Monday is "not possible", but Ford "wishes to testify, provided that we can agree on terms that are fair and which ensure her safety."  I expect that Senate Republicans will have little or no patience with this request, seeing a call for negotiations as a gambit (another one, in their view) to further delay the process. 

I can't tell whether Ford is telling the truth or not.  Haven't seen enough to confirm to my own satisfaction that her coming forward now is not a dirty trick.  And the stakes are sufficiently high that the possibility of dirty tricks can't be ruled out.  At the same time - it feels like her story could be true.  What would go a long way to making it feel true is if the publicity about her accusation causes three or five or 15 other women to step forward and report that Kavanaugh assaulted them, too.  But they should be brought forward before the Senate vote, not after.  And Ford must testify on Monday.  If she doesn't, I think her credibility will be suspect enough that Republicans will feel empowered to proceed with a vote.  Republicans aren't going to let this thing slip past a December confirmation vote - whether it's Kavanaugh or someone else who they're voting to confirm.

The "S" word

Three articles that take seriously the notion that this may be a moment of schism.

"Martyr to Purity"

This article in Commonweal by Mollie Wilson O'Brien is worth reading. It is especially relevant to the present discussions of rape and "me, too".  The article is about Anna Kolesarova, who was beatified on Sept. 1, 2018.
From the article:
"Anna Kolesárová was a Slovak girl who was shot to death in her own home, in front of her family, by a soldier from the occupying Red Army in 1944. Her courage and her suffering are undeniable. She is the first Slovak layperson to be beatified. Her death at the hands of a Russian soldier makes her a symbol of the struggle against totalitarianism, and her cult represents a renewal of religion after Communism, especially among the young. The trouble is not in her biography, but in the outdated and harmful ideas about sex and purity the church applies to her death. A recent account from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life says that Anna “repeatedly rejected the young man’s advances, preferring to die rather than give herself to him.” A church that continues to talk this way about rape, murder, and chastity is a church that cannot credibly face its own crisis of sexual abuse or repair its damaged moral authority"

What It Took to Make America Great in '48

 In 1948, Congress voted to provide $12 billion in economic aid for Europe’s recovery from World War II. That would be about $120 billion today, pal. The vote in the Senate was 71-19, and in the House it was 333-78.

 That was the enactment of the Marshall Plan, which remains controversial among niggling ideological economists today but elsewhere is seen as one of our country’s finest hours. The Congress that enacted it was the one President Truman called the “do-nothing, good-for-nothing 80^th Congress” in his successful 1948 election campaign. Domestically, the 80^th didn’t do much, and what it did was not good.

 True. But that Congress, with both houses controlled by Republicans for the first time since 1934, did pass the Marshall Plan. Republicans then were, as now, opposed to foreign aid, opposed to government spending, opposed to government planning, opposed to Democrats and especially opposed to a Democrat in the White House.

 So, how did they assemble the better angels of their natures and pass the Marshall Plan?

Would it persuade you?

WaPo published a heretofore private letter from Ronald Reagan to his dying father-in-law, Dr. Loyal Davis. The letter strikes me as a heartfelt attempt on Reagan's part to help Davis find peace through faith. Davis was not a believer.

Deep behind enemy lines

My dispatch from Canada.

Money, money, money

It's pretty clear that big money, often that of individual billionaires, has totally corrupted politics in the US. It seems that virtually every Republican member of Congress is "owned" by the NRA, or the Kochs, or other big money groups.  I imagine many Democrats are also - just different lobbyists, different billionaires.  So, they fear doing or saying anything that will disrupt the funding for their careers. Career before country is the mantra of the GOP in Congress for sure - they keep their mouths shut and let Trump continue to destroy constitutional principles, and even conservative principles (tariffs for example). 

Alone in the Galaxy?

Bob Ginsberg, an occasional commenter on NewGathering, has some thoughts on the odds of intelligent life elsewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy.

When I was in grade school, in the 1950s, in New York City, I remember quite clearly being taught, in no uncertain terms, that there was nothing special about the earth, the sun, or the solar system.   We were just one typical system out of millions, and definitely not the center of the universe.

That is still true. But then again . . .

The Kepler satellite (launched by NASA in 2009) was designed to search for “exoplanets”—planets around stars other than our own sun—and to astronomers’ surprise, thousands of these planets have now been found and studied (an amazing amount of information can be gleaned from starlight!).  While all are interesting, none of them resemble Earth in any key parameter.

A deacon calls on Cardinal Wuerl to resign - more updates

Update 3 9/13 7:24 am (h/t Gene Palumbo):  Jenkins of RNS has filed an update to clarify that when Wuerl meets with Francis, it will be to request that Francis accept his resignation.  This link provides some details and the text of the Catholic News Service release that is the basis for Jenkins' clarification.

Update 2 9/12 5:20 pm: Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service reports (h/t Jim McCrea) that Cardinal Wuerl will meet with Pope Francis "soon" to determine whether he should remain in place.  Jenkins notes that Wuerl is 77, so had already submitted his resignation to Francis when he turned 75; as frequently is the case, Francis decides whether and when to accept that submission.  Jenkins also reports that Wuerl met with his priests over the Labor Day weekend and some of them urged him to step down.

Update 9/11/2018 12:15 am: I've added some additional material at the bottom of the post.

-----

A deacon in Washington DC sticks his neck out.

The Resistance 2: IT'S THE DEMOCRATS!!!

Michael Caputo is on 1A (NPR) claiming that the Anonymous op-ed in the NYT was written by a secret cabal of Democrats using Trump admin buzz words ("lodestone," "off the rails") to implicate cabinet members, and pretending to support conservative principles to make it sound like Repubs don't support the president.

Caputo, like many conservatives misses two important points: Democrats aren't purer in their actions than Republicans, they just ain't as good at dirty tricks. In the first place, Democrats are notorious for infighting and disorganization. A cabal of Democrats would collapse before it could agree on a final draft of an editorial. In the second place, they usually leave a lot of fingerprints and get caught. Think Donna Brazile's leaking debate questions or DMC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz's actions against the Sanders campaign.

Caputo also claims that mainstream Democrats pose a threat to so-called Sanders Democrats. That presupposes that such a creature as a mainstream Democrat exists. And it ignores President Obama's (arguably a mainstream Dem) critical words for Anonymous in these extracts from a recent speech.

The rest of the guests are having an interesting discussion about what the "deep state" really is.

The show will be available for streaming later on here. Worthwhile.

Really, really Grrrrr-worthy

 UPDATE: You won't be surprised that, upon further review, ICE said yesterday (Tuesday) that Francis Anwana has to go. Generously, and in the spirit that makes America great, ICE will let Mr. Anwana, who is deaf and disabled and understands sign language in English, but none of the other three languages of Nigeria ... make his own arrangements. Do you have to be stupid, too, to be that mean?

 I think y'all know I have Google automatically send me a daily roundup of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the news. I also promised I wouldn't be a noodge. So I don't pass on details of what is being done, in our name, to children and families that run afoul of the pudgy guy's ego.
 But this outrage is against a deaf and disabled guy -- a 48-year-old who reads at a second-grade level -- deporting him to a country he hasn't seen in 34 years. It doesn't matter what your vulnerability is, the "real Americans" are going to get you and make you suffer.
 The original deportation date was 9/11.  I'll bet the boys sitting around the ICE office got a good guffaw out of the symbolism of protecting the country from the deaf and disabled on such a memorable date.
 Someone has to be really despicable to do this sort of work.

Two takes on clericalism

In our discussions of the scandals currently afflicting the Catholic church, Jack and others have pointed to clericalism as one of the chief culprits.  So when I recently ran across a couple of passages about clericalism, they piqued my interest.  I'm sharing them here.

The Resistance

WaPo's Alexandra Petri has the best satire on the op-ed in the NYT by the Anonymous Senior Official yesterday. She throws into high relief the concern that a crazyman is our president and that only gutless people-pleasers stand between him and the total breakdown of Life as We Know It.

One day [Trump] picked up a red phone and said, “I would like to Start World War III, please, I don’t care with whom,” and if it had not been for me on the other line pretending to be a dial tone, who can say what would have happened. It is these little things that make all the difference between the unimaginable chaos you see and an unimaginable worse chaos. 

UPDATE: The anonymous editorial is generating weird buzz around the watercooler. To wit: The NYT is trying to grab attention from WaPo's Bob Woodward, whose book documents a similar picture of the administration. 

Weirder: The editorial is an inside job meant to deflect attention from the Kavanaugh hearing.

Or weirdest: Trump wrote the editorial himself to incense the base by confirming that the presidency is under the thumb of some deep state, a narrative the Trumpites have believed all along. 

Just sayin'.

ALSO: Apologies for posting over Margaret's thread on the same topic. She posted hers while I.was.composing, so they crossed in the ether.

The Adults in the Room

I applaud the unknown(s) who wrote the Times op-ed piece, and I applaud what they say they are trying to do, but until someone invokes the 25th Amendment....which Cabinet officials and the VP can do (ask the president to step down to allow an investigation by ??the House?), we should fear for the future of constitutional order.

"It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t."

Brett Kavanaugh's Confirmation Hearing

It's day two of Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
So far he has been grilled about gun rights, diversity, sexual harassment, and of course, Roe v Wade. He indicated that it is "...an important precedent which has been reaffirmed many times." (Once again I think one-issue voters are deluding themselves.)
I am actually more interested in what he says about about judicial independence.
Meanwhile of course some people are losing their minds over this.  Folks, repeat after me, the Babylon Bee is satire.

Rahm-shell: Emanuel will not run for re-election in Chicago

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel stunned the city of Chicago and the entire region today by announcing he will not run for re-election.

Critics & Censors, Then & Now

 An echat with Gene Palumbo reminded me that I still own a rare book, so I decided to re-read it. The book is titled Criticism and Censorship,  by Walter Kerr, the distinguished drama critic for the New York Herald Tribune and, later, The Times.
 It's only 86 pages, and the reason it is rare is that it was originally the 1954 Gabriel Richard Lecture at Trinity College in Washington, D.C. Bruce Publishing Co., a conservative Catholic house no longer in business, gave it the kind of press run you would normally give an academic paper.  Then Time magazine gave the book a money review. Orders came pouring in. But by then Bruce had melted the printing plates to re-use the lead. But I had my copy.
 Re-reading it reminded me of the art vs. censors climate of the 1950s, and I was struck by how much the very different climate 65 years later resembles it.

Late Summer Reading

My book club just finished Exit West by Mohsin Hamid.  I liked it.  I don't know that I would have chosen it on my own, but it was something different. There was a little bit of "magical realism", but it was mostly pretty realistic.  It takes place in a dystopian, not-too-distant future.  The two protagonists, Nadia and Saeed, live in an unnamed middle eastern city in which things are going from bad to worse.  In fact there is not a location in the whole story which is not going from bad to worse.  Nadia and Saeed are in love, and decide that they have to flee their city. Which is where the bit of magical realism comes in.  The "doors" are an open secret. They are like worm-holes, which lead to somewhere else. Hopefully where life is easier and less dangerous. But that is a gamble, sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. My favorite part was the last chapter, which is more or less an epilogue, and takes place 50 years later than the rest of the story.  It leaves a bit of hope; bad times don't last forever.
The next selection for the book club is This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm by Ted Genoways.  I am interested to see how the subject is treated; hopefully neither a nostalgic elegy nor an overly pessimistic view of the future of farming.  According to the reviews on Amazon some environmental concerns are addressed, particularly the shrinking of the Ogallala Aquifer. As we were discussing on a previous thread, water shortages are likely to fuel some of the conflicts of the future.
Another book in my reading queue is The Tenth Island: Finding Joy, Beauty, and Unexpected Love in the Azores.  This one isn't a book club selection; it showed up as a Facebook ad, and looked interesting.  Turned out it is available in the Amazon Prime lending library to read free.  So I bit; figured I didn't have anything to lose.  Looks to be in the tradition of Under the Tuscan Sun, or Eat, Pray, Love.
The thing all of these books had going for them is that they aren't about dysfunctional politics or church sex-abuse scandal train wrecks.