Reclaiming Jesus

Although I spend a lot of time here, and read America and NCROnline regularly to keep up with the Catholics, my original spiritual and religious family, I also spend time with the Episcopalians, other mainstream Protestants, and with a progressive Evangelical website (the 19% who didn't vote for Trump).  I subscribe to the Christian Century, and to Sojourners magazines, and skim other websites a couple of times month for interesting articles. I am also on a couple of email lists such as Joan Chittister's, Richard Rohr's, the Washington Post's Acts of Faith letter, and others. I do spend too much time reading all of this, but religion and spirituality have always been an obsessive interest of mine and I have always loved learning about how those who are not Catholic interpret the world in light of their own faith backgrounds.

That's a long an wordy introduction to a question I will get to later for those of you who are still regularly present in Catholic pews.

Can He Really Do This?

I just saw the latest Trump stunt:  He says he wants to end birthright citizenship by an executive order.  That would surely initiate a constitutional crisis...wouldn't it?  That he is saying this before the election means that he thinks it will get votes, or keep them, for his "side".  But if there are any minority and immigrant citizens still on the fence, surely this rhetoric would lose them. Not to mention it would cause Republican moderates who respect constitutional due process a severe amount of discomfort.  I can't imagine that the Supreme Court, even with its present makeup, would let an executive order such as this stand.  He has said that he has no timeline, which tells me he is mainly throwing it out there for effect.  But we would be fools not to take it seriously.

Another Deacon Holding a Bishop Accountable

In Buffalo, A Deacon's Quest to Hold his Bishop Accountable

A deacon at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Swormville, N.Y., for 15 years, Paul Snyder felt “complete shock” one night earlier this year when he learned from a local newscast that his longtime pastor was the subject of sexual harassment allegations made by three young adults.

Diocesan officials knew about the complaints allowed the priest to retire without making the allegations public. The Bishop said that since the young men were adults when they were harassed it was not a case of minors.

The priest "was accused of serving wine to a 19-year-old during dinner at the church rectory and then kissing him and touching his genital area. Father Yetter admitted to the behavior when questioned by diocesan officials in 2017." 

When a bishop has three cases of abuse of young adult men, including this one which gets very close to being a case of underage abuse, the bishop needs to fire the priest publicly and invite people with further information about abuse by this priest to come forward to police.  

I guess the whole thing was on sixty minutes tonight including a former assistant to Bishop Malone who is described as a whistle-blower. She provided copies of internal documents to local media that showed the diocese did not release a full list of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse against children after it said it had.

A New York district attorney is launching an investigation; Cardinal O'Malley and the Apostolic Delegate are getting involved. I think this Bishop's days in office are numbered. His fellow bishops at their November meeting need to do some arm twisting to get a resignation.  

Be careful Bishops!. There may be a deacon looking over your shoulder to take your crosier away from you rather than hand it to you.

Tonight's story is available on the Web. It is told from the perspective of the  administrative assistant. She copied all the documents, and has shared them with the press, the FBI, and 60 minutes. Be sure to also view all the extras. 

The Sixty Minutes Story about the Bishop of Buffalo

This is the extensive Buffalo news story done on the priest in the America article

-I team-buffalo-bishop-malone-allowed-amherst-priest-to-remain-pastor-despite-abuse-allegations



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"Hyperventilating About the Caravan"

This piece by conservative writer, Mona Charen, appeared in this morning's paper.  From the article:

"A caravan of ragtag would-be immigrants is making its way through the nations of Honduras (per capita income $4,630), El Salvador (per capita income $7,540), and Guatemala (per capita income $8,000) to Mexico.

The response in the U.S. (per capita income $60,200) — panic.

Hyperventilation is seemingly the response we bring to all challenges in 2018 America. We’ve seen caravans before. There was a 1,500-person caravan that marched north just this past April. Of the band, only 400 actually reached the border and requested asylum. On average, about 22 percent of asylum requests are granted."

Forget Compassion

(This is something I have been trying to compose to submit to a certain Catholic magazine that we all like to read.  It's not a draft, but some ideas.  I have been having a hard time even getting them down.  So hard that it has sort of blocked me from writing anything else for months.  But I would like to request your input.  Again, this is not a draft, but an attempt at an argument).

The Republicans are going after Obamacare again with another attempt to gut its foundations and kill it by poisoning it, since they have been unable to get the votes to shoot it in the head.  This time they are trying to repeal the ban on denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.  They are doing this in a particularly cynical way via a lawsuit by 18 Red State administrations to repeal the ACA regulations about coverage requirements.  While the lawsuit would still forbid people being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, it would allow insurers to deny coverage for illnesses arising from those pre-existing conditions.  (Yes, you have read this correctly).

Without going into a lot of detail, if this were passed, what would happen is that new reduced benefit policies could be constructed and sold to the healthy and the sick would be pushed into more expensive policies built on top of sicker risk pools.  The separation of the sick from the healthy is part of the Republican end game of "insurance reform".  They have suggested at various times that they want to construct high risk pools at the state level and that these would be somehow subsidized by the state.  There are all kinds of problems with this aside from the fact that whenever this has been tried it hasn't worked.  What the Republicans are trying to do is to segment the insured population into haves and have nots to gain the political support of the former and garner just enough votes to remain in power.  They want to create cheaper insurance for some, but not all, and to divide the electorate over price.

From our Catholic point of view, this whole question can be discussed in terms of compassion.  The ACA, as flawed as it is, was an attempt to insure millions more people.  Uninsured people die too young and it would seem to be the heart of compassion to prevent this.

But the compassion argument is intractable.  It's intractable because in the Church there are two competing and irreconcilable theories of compassion.

The theory of compassion that has somehow become associated with the "Left" is that if people can't provide necessities for themselves, it is compassionate for those who can to help provide necessities for them.  Healthcare would seem to be a such a necessity.

The theory of compassion that has somehow become associated with the "Right" is that the one needs to support the development of self-sufficiency in others ("Teach a man to fish" etc).  Any outside aid provided to a person needs to be balanced against this.  While it is exemplary to provide aid to people who cannot provide it for themselves, if one provides aid to someone who could provide it for themselves, one is supporting a dependency that undercuts the recipient's efforts towards self sufficiency.  In the case of healthcare, healthcare may in fact be a necessity, but this is irrelevant.  Or to put it another way, since it is a necessity, it becomes all the more important that a person's self sufficiency be cultivated to that they can provide themselves with their own necessities.

In this formulation, the kind of compassion proposed by the "Left" is actually destructive since it undermines self sufficient and creates dependence.

The Right does not deny that there are people who cannot provide for themselves and must therefore be aided in the Leftist sense.  But the classic method for providing them is charity rather than state support.  Not only is charity the appropriate method in this case, but it is the most efficient one.  Charity allows the giver to vet each situation individually to determine whether each recipient in fact deserves charity.  It allows the vetting to continue until, perhaps, the recipient reaches a point where the Spigot of Blessed Giving needs to be turned off for their own good.  It allows the integration of the poor recipients into a more personal community since charity requires direct intervention and interaction (thus strengthening the community). 

And it's tax deductible.

Now we are all certainly good Christians, God help us.  And it would seem that a question like healthcare should be framed in terms of compassion.  But I will argue that it absolutely should not be.  The compassion argument gets us nowhere.  Worse, it hides another question beneath it for both the Left and the Right.  On one hand, the US certainly spends enough on healthcare to adequately and thoroughly cover everyone who lives here.  On the other hand, there are massive disparities in who is covered (and how they are covered) and who is not.  The underlying issue is not compassion, but inequality.  We have the conundrum in the US (if not the world) where we find that as more wealth is created in the country, more inequality is also created.  If we look at this in terms of the compassion argument above, we have the Right saying that if there is inequality in the face of so much wealth, it can only mean that the poor are somehow refusing to participate (since the wealth is surely available to them should they want to acquire it).  And we have the Left saying that since there is so much wealth, surely some of it can be redistributed to support everyone.

But I think the case can be made that none of this involves compassion at all.  If we frame the question of inequality in terms of compassion, we are saying that inequality is simply a given and must be overlain with a system of compassion to rescue people.  But I will argue that the system of inequality itself is the problem and the problem isn't one of compassion at all. 

Sexual Abuse as a Justice Issue

A New Catholic Moment 

Why Prosecutors Are Taking Bold Steps on Sex-Abuse

Paul Moses writes:

As the Justice Department launches an investigation of clergy sexual abuse of minors in Pennsylvania’s Catholic dioceses, it is worth noting that victims have called for such a probe for at least fifteen years. Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told Attorney General John Ashcroft in a November 2003 letter that the Justice Department was in a “unique position” to plumb the secrets within the church’s organizational structure.

“We believe that senior management within the Church…have not been held institutionally accountable for these practices, and as a non-profit corporation continue to selectively circumvent our Nation’s laws,” their letter said.

This article is an excellent summary of the bold steps that prosecutors are taking. However it does not really tell us why this is a justice issue.

The paper that Commonweal needs to publish is an updated version of a paper that was written by Anne Underwood, .Esq.for the initial large gathering of Voice of the Faith back around 2002. It was entitled

Abuse of Power as a Justice Issue 

For many years it was on the VOTF website, but many of the foundational documents disappeared when VOTF reorganized their website.  Fortunately, I kept a copy since I was so impressed with  its reasoning. 

Below I will summarize its argument in relationship to the present situation. 

Francis removes Memphis bishop

Pope Francis has removed Memphis bishop Martin Holley from office.

More about "The Caravan." UPDATE

Here is a fairly long account in VOX about the caravan.

The analysis gives an example of the caravan's origins in the work of a former Honduran legislator and his wife, a human rights organizer. This matches something the WSJ mentioned the other day in an editorial (no accompanying news story).

It may feed Trump's conspiracy theories, but VOX points to a more cogent and complicated set of reasons: (1) the usual: violence and economic conditions; (2) and the new: people have decided that traveling in a large group is free (no coyotes to pay), is safer (than coyotes, gangs, etc.), and families with children can come together instead of adults going alone.

VOX offers the most detailed report I've seen thus far. [No middle eastern terrorists mentioned; of course that doesn't mean they aren't there in the guise of a 7 -year old boy!]

Question: What does Gene Palumbo make of this story and of the caravan(s) themselves?

UPDATE   The NYTimes read VOX! and has added to the story:

"SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — The flier began circulating on social media in Honduras this month, ....It was a call to join a caravan, the work of leftist activists and politicians who had helped lead migrants north in the past. But they also tossed a political spark into the mix, blaming their right-wing government for the exodus: “The violence and poverty is expelling us.” They never expected it to ignite an international firestorm.

"Far from Honduras, the White House was busy grappling with the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, .... And with the midterm elections in the United States only weeks away, President Trump was eager to change the script."

MOBS COMMENT: And change it he did...though it looks like someone else also tried to change it with pipe bombs.....

A Female Cleric at the Synod on Young People

I thought this article on the America site was interesting:
"A young priest in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church has been pleasantly surprised by the welcome and openness she has experienced at the Synod of Bishops on young people, she told America in an interview. A fraternal delegate, Rev. Martina Viktorie Kopecká, 32, has the distinction of being the only female cleric at the Synod of Bishops, which is taking place from Oct. 3 to 28 in Rome."

Conservative Review: thumbs down on Francis

National Review launches a remarkable series of attacks against the Holy Father.

Did they go there?

This past weekend's Gospel reading was as good an opportunity as any for a preacher to address misbehavior and mismanagement among church leadership.

Behind the horror of Khashoggi

Lobelog has this up by Graham Fuller, looking at the background relations of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East. Informative and helpful.

The Geopolitics of the Khashoggi Murder.

Small world

A few weeks ago, in a post on clericalism, I quoted from the newsletter of an organization called the National Center for the Laity.  I noted then that, even though it is based in Chicago and I've landed on its mailing list, I knew nothing about it and in fact had never heard of it until their newsletter started showing up in my (snail) mailbox from time to time.

Any connections between a fed investigation and the Bannon-Burke project?

Paranoia is everywhere. Here's a small dose that hit me today.

Why has the Justice Dept. announced an investigation of the Pennsylvania dioceses recently investigated by that state's attorney general?

New York Times. 

"The Justice Department has opened an investigation into Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania accused of covering up sex abuse for decades, a significant escalation in scrutiny of the church.

"The inquiry is believed to be the first statewide investigation by the federal government of the church’s sex abuse problems. [Underlining mine.] And it comes two months after the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office released an explosive grand jury report charging that bishops and other church leaders had covered up the abuse of more than 1,000 people over a period of more than 70 years."

Has the Trump Justice Dept. been infilitrated by the Bannon-Burke Alliance discussed by Massimo Fagglioni.

Commonweal:   "The Catholic opposition to Pope Francis is headquartered in the United States. It is a minority within the U.S. Church, but it is well organized. Its main intellectual organ is First Things, its episcopal leader Archbishop Chaput. But just as nineteenth-century European ultramontanists looked beyond the Alps to Rome, this movement is looking beyond the Atlantic. Besides the sympathetic Catholic journalists who spread archbishop Vigano's "testimony" on August 27, there are also more overtly partisan leaders of this movement, such as Cardinal Raymond Burke and Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist. Burke and Bannon are collaborating on a new right-wing Roman Catholic organization in Rome, the Dignitatis Humanae Institute. Bannon is one of its leaders; Burke is president of its board of advisers. The institute has been described by its founders as an “academy for the Judeo-Christian West.”

Jamal Khashoggi's Fate

This development is beyond disturbing:
"Donald Trump says the US has asked Turkey for an audio recording of Jamal Khashoggi’s death which reportedly proves he was brutally tortured before his premeditated murder inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul."

"A new in-law at Thanksgiving"

Chief Justice John Roberts tries to tamp down talk of a partisan Court in a speech
at the University of Minnesota. Does he understand the problem?

MINNEAPOLIS — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. for the first time Tuesday addressed the recent bitter partisan fight over new Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court, seeking to “assure” an audience that the court will serve “one nation” and not “one party or one interest.”  He suggests that the new justice is like a new in-law!"

Let's see how that goes. 

"But Roberts said the court must try not to become identified with partisan interests.

“Our role is very clear: We are to interpret the Constitution and laws of the United States, and to ensure that the political branches act within them,” he said. “That job obviously requires independence from the political branches. The story of the Supreme Court would be very different without that sort of independence.”

Aspirational! 

Potential schism in Orthodoxy - Update

Update 10/19/2018 - for anyone wishing more background on this falling-out, here are a couple of references for further reading:

• At the Pray Tell blog, Nicholas Denysenko, an Orthodox deacon and theologian, provides more details as to how this split came about, and what it means for Orthodoxy (h/t Tom Blackburn).  "The rest of the world’s Orthodox Churches are now under pressure to pick a side.  Faithful people who are ambivalent about the Ukrainian issue might be prohibited from partaking of communion in Church. This issue hits home in America, where Orthodox plurality is the norm ..."
• In the NY Times, Nikos Konstandaras, a Greek newspaper columnist, does a deeper dive into the geopolitical dimensions of the dispute.  Orthodox churches intermix religious identity and national identity, perhaps to a greater extent than we in the contemporary religious West are accustomed to (although it seems to me that the admixture is still latent in Catholicism), and so it's not surprising that in Orthodoxy, disputes between nations may result in disputes between churches, and vice-versa.  

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A dismaying development: it seems that the Russian Orthodox Church is very near the breaking point in its communion with the Greek Orthodox Church.  Whether this break will be permanent, and what this will mean for the two churches and the other churches in Orthodoxy, is not yet clear.

Meantime, down on the farm ...

Corn! You can eat it, you can give it to your cows, you can
ferment it for liquor and gasoline, and you can cut mazes
through it for the kids! I can see corn from my house!

In the midst of a trade war with China and two days after Justice Bret Kavanaugh's confirmation vote, President Donald Trump directed the EPA to make ethanol available year round.

I'm pretty sure it's all related.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has been agitating for the ethanol rule change. It's good for Iowa farmers, who lead the nation in ethanol production. (Iowa produces twice as much ethanol as the next biggest ethanol-producing state, Nebraska. Ethanol is also big biz in eight other Midwestern states.)

In the middle, he caught it from both sides

  Seven new exemplars were canonized last Sunday, but Oscar Romero was clearly the star of the event. That is not surprising. He has been a saint in El Salvador since his assassination in 1980. If bishop is murdered in his cathedral, it does signify. They still write books and plays about St. Thomas a Becket, who died at his altar in1170. Canterbury immediately became a pilgrimage site and inspired the first great (so English majors tell me) work of English literature.

 But one of the saints he upstaged was a pope of living memory, St. Paul VI. It could be argued that the lack of enthusiasm he arouses is because that memory lives. His pontificate from 1963 to 1978 pleased neither liberals nor conservatives.  He has few champions today. Well, politicians often say that if both sides disagree with them they must be doing something right.

  St. Paul’s pontificate was destined, or doomed, to be in a middle: Between Vatican II and its acceptance; between enthusiasts who wanted to go farther, faster and irreconcilables who didn’t want to go anywhere but back; between a pope who could light up a room and a pope who could suck all the air out of it.

 Still, he ought to get respect for playing the no-win hand he was dealt doing and not whining about it.

Metrics - Update

Update - Pope Francis's homily for this weekend's notable canonizations also dwelt on today's Gospel reading.  I've pasted some of it at the bottom of this post.

This is my homily for today, the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B.  The readings for today are here.

Francis accepts Cardinal Wuerl's resignation - Update

Update - I've provide links to a couple of other takes on this development at the bottom of the post.

In a subtle and fairly complex gesture, Pope Francis accepted Cardinal Donald Wuerl's resignation as Archbishop of Washington DC earlier today.  Despite being under fire for allegedly being implicated in a group of sex-abuse and corruption scandals, Wuerl remains a cardinal, and Francis has appointed him as apostolic administrator of the diocese until a successor can be named.

Walking a Mile in their Shoes

I would like to call your attention to two articles.  The first is from the America Magazine site, entitled  "I am gay and Catholic. Are you willing to walk in my shoes?"
It is an eye-opening first person account, also an exercise in empathy.  As a parent, I don't know what advice I would have if I had a gay son or daughter.

"Old adult" literature reading list

I'm giving my paper on "old adult" literature at the Michigan College English Association tomorrow. I've reviewed a few of the books I read earlier on this blog. Here's the complete list of novels I read for the project in case others are interested.

Gene on Blessed Oscar

... soon to be St. Oscar Romero.   A couple of weeks back, I had gall to post the text of a homily that talked a bit about Oscar Romero's martyrdom; inasmuch as Gene Palumbo is a regular reader of NewGathering, that's a bit like blathering on about counterpoint in front of JS Bach.  Today, NCR has published an important article by Gene about Romero.  It dispels some common myths and misperceptions about the great Salvadoran martyr.  Please do take a look at it, as the day approaches for Romero's canonization.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/archbishop-scar-romero-setting-record-straight

The uncoupled Is

 There are two things nagging at my brain at the moment. Maybe you can help me with one of them.
 The other day, I watched a toddler toddle down the street holding on to Mom's hand with one of his hands, and Dad's hand with the other. He was between a man and a woman. But I cannot believe he is a marriage.
 Likewise, at a wonderful Italian dinner I sat across from the hostess. There was a table between us. Is the table a marriage? When I wave at a female friend, is whatever is between us a marriage?
 I ask because I keep hearing that "marriage is between a man and a woman." The estimable Joanna Kakissis, in reports for NPR over the weekend, talked about how some Romanians attempted to stuff that law -- it is a law there -- into their constitution so it won't go away, as it has elsewhere. They lost.
 But "marriage is between" is not just a Romanian idiom. I have heard it in English from the ambo, from the hustings and from the Vatican.
 "Is," as I learned it, is a "linking verb" joining two nouns "Marriage" is a noun. "Between" is a preposition.  A lot of nouns can be between a man and a woman -- (bad) blood, love (for opera), politics. Sometimes the "between" indicates a divide, and sometimes it indicates sharing, which makes it an ambiguous, one might say slippery, word to use in a definition anyway.
 But whatever it means, it isn't a noun, so it is not what marriage "is."
 People say that "most people" understand "a contract" before the word "between." I don't think the Church wants to go there. Contracts can be broken unilaterally, and as soon as either side gets a little antsy, you have to get lawyers. Besides pre-nups are not marriages.
 I've tried sticking "a sacrament" in there. But that not only is not what "most people" understand to be there, it stretches the standard definition of a sacrament.
 I know, we all know, what they think they mean when they say "marriage is between a man and a woman." But, technically, that is not what they are saying; if it is, the dinner table qualified.
 Well, anyway, that bothers me.
 My other nagging question is, why did  Brett Kavanaugh have to take the oath three times? Wouldn't the first two stick?

Most women I know can relate to this

A friend posted this on Facebook - part of a campaign to get out the vote.

Paige Mendicino
October 6 at 6:40 PM

I’m 14 and I’m struggling in Algebra class. When I ask for help, the male teacher says ‘I’m not surprised, girls aren’t that good at Algebra.’

I’m 18 and go to my first fraternity parties with girlfriends. We don’t ever say it out loud but it’s understood that we need to stick together at these parties and not get separated, for our own safety.

I’m 20 and I’m working as a hostess at the Red Lion Inn in San Jose, near the airport. Men in suits come in to eat after their meetings during the day and I see them take off their wedding rings before heading into the bar next to the restaurant. Every girl who works there learns quickly not to bend too far over because of the short skirts of our uniforms.

I’m 22 and it’s my first day on a new job. My male supervisor gets me into a room alone and I think he’s going to tell me about the job but instead he tells me about how much he likes sex and how he needs to have it every day. I get up and walk out of the room and avoid him after that, but I don’t tell anyone because I’m one of the only women there and I don’t know what to do.

I’m 24 and I’m watching Anita Hill on TV, testifying about a man who wants to be on the Supreme Court. I don’t understand everything I’m watching but I understand that she’s a black woman facing down a panel of white men and she is going to lose because, at 24, I do understand who has power and who does not.

I’m any age in my 20s and I’m walking on the street, in a park, in a city, in a suburb, anywhere. Men tell me to smile, to wait a minute, to slow down what’s my hurry, can I ask you a question, can I stand too close to you, can I demand your space, your time, your attention, hey where you going bitch?

I’m 25. I’m buying my first car and the salesman offers a price I know is way too high. I bring my stepdad to the showroom and the same car is now $3000 less. I smile and buy the car but inside, I’m seething.

I’m any age in my 30’s and I think about where I park, where I go, whether I should get in that elevator that only has one man in it and how I should make sure not to make eye contact with men in the streets. All of this is normal to me and I don’t question any of it.

I’m 35. I’m buying my second car and the salesman says we should wait for my husband to get there before talking about the price but would I like to see the makeup mirror? I tell him I’m a lesbian and, if he’s waiting for my husband, he’s going to be waiting a long time. I leave because I’m learning.

I’m 40 and a woman, Hillary Clinton, is taking a serious run at the Democratic presidential nomination. She’s smart, tough and qualified but she endures endless anger, viciousness, and misogyny and she eventually loses in the primary. Male friends tell me it’s probably for the best because there’s just something they don’t like about her, you know?

I’m 49 and a man who said he grabs women by the pussy is elected as the 45th President of the United States. The night of the election, I feel physically ill and my first conscious thought is ‘my God, the Supreme Court.’ The next morning, I overhear two men laughing and congratulating each other about the election and I feel unsafe in my own country.

I’m 51 and another man who stands credibly accused of sexual assault has just been confirmed to serve on the Supreme Court. I see women on television sobbing, screaming, protesting, crying out in their anguish and their fear. I am so angry. I think of every woman I know and I am so angry.

I am any age, every age. I am a woman. I am a daughter. I am discounted. I am underrepresented. I am underestimated. But I am a voter. Today, that has to be enough.

Why Democrats will take back the House

Like many people, I have views, and I make predictions.  For the most part, I keep the predictions to myself.  But I will venture a modest one today: Democrats will win control of the US House of Representatives on November 6.

Vigano meets his match

Vigano has been challenging the Vatican, especially Francis, to respond to his original letter, full text here.  Recently Vigano challenged the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, to back his story.

On Saturday, the Vatican said that "the Holy Father has decided that information gathered during the preliminary investigation be combined with a further thorough study of the entire documentation present in the Archives of the Dicasteries and Offices of the Holy See regarding the former Cardinal McCarrick, in order to ascertain all the relevant facts, to place them in their historical context and to evaluate them objectively." 

However on Sunday, Cardinal March Ouellet issued his own testimony, full text here.. 

The morning read

A few things I've read this morning that may be of interest:

• At National Review, Jay Nordlinger's commentary on this year's Nobel Peace Prize winners, Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist who has worked to bring an end to rape as a weapon of war; and Nadia Murad, "a Yazidi woman, a former sex slave of ISIS, and now a human-rights activist".  Nordlinger, borrowing a phrase from Churchill, judges Mukwege "a genius of humanity".
• David Brooks on the Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford hearing: "A Complete National Disgrace".  

Over the past few years, hundreds of organizations and thousands of people (myself included) have mobilized to reduce political polarization, encourage civil dialogue and heal national divisions.

The first test case for our movement was the Kavanaugh hearings. It’s clear that at least so far our work is a complete failure. 

• Our own Margaret O'Brien Steinfels in Commonweal with a review of Karen Johnson's One in Christ.  "In the fifty years following World War I and the murderous 1919 race riot, a small number of Chicago Catholics, black and white" worked for racial justice and equality, in the community and in the church.  Fascinating stuff, not least because Peggy is able to situate herself in the latter years of that history. 

So that's what happened to it!

You are in interwar Germany. "Rejection of  'Americanism" became shorthand for all the ills of modernity that the German middle class felt they faced....[blah, blah, blah usual examples...]" Then this: "Their [young girls] bobbed 'American' hair style, said one cleric, was 'truly bereft of metaphysics.'"     Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe: 1914-1945.

The greatest philosophy course I ever took was "Metaphysics" taught by John Bannon in 1962 at LU (Chicago). It seemed to my sophomore self that it helped to ground what was visible in the not visible. I was convinced that there was a "meta," an abstraction, a foundation, a form beyond or behind what was apparent. I basked in this idea.

But then I became a history major and didn't pursue the meaning or consequences of having a "meta." I know I have one. I also know that our culture is more or less bereft of metaphysics (among other things), but I never knew that bobbed hair may have been its death knell.

Lyrics - UPDATE

Update 10/4/2018 9:36 pm CT:  As an illustration of why "business as usual" isn't really an option anymore, check out this Boston Globe story (h/t Rev. Anthony Ruff at the Pray Tell blog).  Lots of statistics illustrating the intergenerational nature of the demographic contraction the church is facing.

The prescription for combating the decline lies in large part not with Rome, but with local Catholic leaders inspiring young people individually, said Thompson, from the University of Dayton. 

“It’s going to have to be the lay leaders — parents, teachers, local parish priests — they’re going to have to put forward models of Catholic authentic life,” he said. “If they don’t do that — if people don’t see there is any real possibility of transformation, that this whole religion stuff doesn’t actually make a difference in people’s lives — then all the policy prescriptions are not going to reach people where they live.”

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I mentioned in a recent comment that I spent a couple of days earlier this week at a conference on the future of the archdiocese, the intention of which was to rally parish and diocesan leaders to do something about the dismal reality we're facing: decaying mass attendance, schools and parishes unable to stay above water, young people staying away, and so on.  The "something" we're being asked to do is roll out a program across the archdiocese called Renew My Church, one leg of which is to get us to transform our parishes from being in maintenance mode (i.e. run for the benefit of its current members) to mission mode (i.e. becoming outward-facing, evangelizing people).

Looking at what's behind the curtain

 When the U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that the federal government could not remove the Cherokees from their lands in Georgia, President Andrew Jackson supposedly said, "John Marshall has made his ruling; now let him enforce it."
 Most historians don't accept that quote as accurate,  but its point is certainly true. The supremacy of the Supreme Court is one of several things about the court that is true only if everybody important agrees to pretend it is true.
 The Cherokees were "removed" to Oklahoma, and there wasn't a thing the Chief Justice could do about it, alone nor with the other six (at the time) justices and all the clerks and bailiffs together. The President held the military power.
 When Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the decision requiring school desegregation, President Dwight Eisenhower wasn't particularly happy to have the results dropped on his desk. He could have pulled a Jackson. What he did was enforce the order. He federalized the Arkansas National Guard to keep the mob from preventing the desegregation of Little Rock High School.
 The Cherokee ruling was ignored. The school desegregation ruling would have been voided had Eisenhower decided to "let Earl Warren enforce it" or if the Arkansas National Guard troops had mutinied against the commander-in-chief.

Paradigm Shift

The phrase "paradigm shift" used to be a running joke between me and my husband.  In the days when he was employed in the corporate world, there would often be motivational seminars or in-services that they were required to attend.  Nearly always there would be a new way of doing things which was touted, which would supposedly change business life as they knew it.  I would ask him afterwards, "Well, what kind of paradigm shift is going around this time?"
Jokes aside, it seems that we as a society are going through some major paradigm shifts. This article from Vox News, revisits the 1984 movie, Sixteen Candles, as an illustration of how our thinking has changed.