Et tu, MLK? Or not.

MLK biographer David  Garrow has reviewed summaries of FBI tapings and surveillance of the great civil rights leader.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/30/irresponsible-historians-attack-david-garrows-mlk-allegations/

The summaries not only assert the now common knowledge he had affairs, perhaps almost understandable given he was good looking, famous and charismatic like JFK.  But they also assert his sexual proclivities spilled over into abusive and debauched behaviour.  One summary alleges King witnessed a rape and even gave advice.

The FBI, of course, at the direction of the nasty, pug-faced Hoover, was out to get King.  This bias may have been transferred to eager-to-please field agents.  The actual archived tapes won't be released until 2027.  Hopefully, I'll still be alive and hear that the summaries were greatly exaggerated.   But the pessimist in me worries.

Barrow's assertions are, of course, being immediately  weaponized by scumbags like Dinesh D'Souza.  Garrow has been personally attacked.  Perhaps the tapes can be made to be released early and quench speculation.

Happy Feast of the Ascension

Some locations celebrate the Ascension on this coming Sunday. In the three dioceses of Nebraska we celebrate it today.

This mural depicting the Ascension of the Lord is on the wall behind the altar in our parish church.  It was painted in  2002 by local artist, Ardith Starostka.

The artist used parishioners for the models of the people in the foreground.  It was kind of funny to listen to some of the comments around the time the picture was being painted. It was along the lines of, "Well, I know so-and-so, and let me tell you, he is no saint!"

The artist's husband posed for the figure of Christ, and her daughters for the angels.  She only has two daughters, but there are eight angels.
One of the apostles was modeled after our then-archbishop, Elden Francis Curtiss.  When he came for Confirmation he was a bit unnerved to see himself in the mural.
Some of the people who posed for the picture are now deceased, so it is a piece of parish history.

I love this song: Hail the Day That Sees Him Rise. Too bad we only sing it once a year.

A letter from Melania

This letter on Mrs. Trump's letterhead arrived in yesterday's mail, causing a fair amount of mirth in the household.  If she deserves credit for Standing By Her Man, then I am happy to give it to her.

Leave the gun, take the cannoli

 When I decided it was time to read myself into the mind of Vladimir Putin, I started with a book by Garry Kasparov, the great chess champion who had the guts to run against Putin. Kasparov, in turn, began his book by referring me to Mario Puzo's The Godfather. Before you turn to Macchiavelli, he said, if you want to know Putin, read The Godfather.
 I never had, but I immediately did. And I find it has local application as well.
 And so I was not surprised at the following section of an interview Heather Voegell of Pro Publica and Andrea Bernstein of WNYC conducted on the New York radio station with Andrew McCabe. He was the acting FBI chief, after Jim Comey, whom Jeff Sessions rubbed out, I mean "fired," 26 hours before his pension would have kicked in.

   McCabe: You know, it’s a method of operation that I’d seen many times before in my own investigative history working in Russian organized crime. The leader of the crew, the leader of an organized criminal enterprise doesn’t come out and tell someone what to do. They throw it out as an option that they want that other person to select. And so that

I was thirsty, and you gave me ...

 They crossed the barren desert when nobody was leaving food and water out there for them.
  They crossed the barren desert when some Americans left food and water out there.
  They cross the barren desert, even if they don't know that someone is trying to keep them alive or, if they know, they also know the good Samaritans may not be successful
 I'm talking about immigrants.
 A good Samaritan goes on trial today for trying to help. He faces 22 years in prison for having been caught with some immigrants, exactly the same as if he were one of the coyotes who "help" people make the crossing for money. There is also a first-person story by the dangerous Samaritan in today's Washington Post. The NPR story also covers a county attorney who may be indicted for the same offense.
 The government's case is that if you don't give them water, they won't come. But they came before there was water. And they will keep coming even if your pubic employees achieve 100% effectiveness:
 Their job includes finding the water jugs Samaritans put out in the desert, and dumping them. Aren't we lucky to be rich enough to pay people for jobs like that?

Don't Worry, Bee Happy

With all the depressing news lately, if a bit of good news comes my way, I will take it. One bit of good news is that bees are making a comeback . Colony collapse, and pesticide death of bees has been in the news the past several years.  It seemed as if they were one of the canaries in the gold mine, whose demise foreshadowed other losses in nature.

The Lights Are Going Out in Europe

As Europe sorts itself out, it appears that the center did hold, but only barely, in elections for the European Parliament. The British Conservatives were a non-factor. They came in fifth at home, which may not mean much since Britain is leaving the Parliament some day, maybe at Halloween, maybe sooner, maybe next year, maybe after the British Parliament rejects Mrs. May’s plan one more time as a sort of going-away present.

 But Germany’s oldest party, the Social Democrats, ended up with about the same parliamentary clout as the Munich Parent-Teachers Association. They, and Britain’s Labour Party, are as brain dead as our American nominally leftwing party. The best lack all conviction.

 The worst are full of passionate intensity. The rightwing, crypto-Nazi, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant parties made fewer gains than feared but are approaching 60 mph after being at zero only five or six years ago. One thing they seem to have in common is fear. Another is Steve Bannon who wasn’t banished from Jerusalem when Trump fired him; he was sent like Paul to the Gentiles, and is doing well for himself there, thank you very much.

 It’s a bad time to need anything from your neighbor.

 One thing the European Parliament can look forward to is disruption because the newbies tend not to want to do anything for Europeans but to undo the past 75 years. They have found a constituency that longs for the good old days of trenches, gas warfare, round-the-clock bombing, food shortages and sleeping with the occupiers. Make Europe great again.

 Meanwhile, the rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Westminster to be born.

Some Catholic views on what should be done about abortion

Abortion continues to roil the waters of American politics.  What should happen?

Hunthausen and Wuerl - what happened?

An interesting brief retrospective by Ed Condon on Cardinal Wuerl's career was occasioned by this week's installation of Wuerl's successor, Wilton Gregory, as archbishop of Washington DC.  We've noted previously here at NewGathering that Wuerl, during his last year as archbishop, was ensnared in both of the scandals that continue to reverberate throughout the American church: the disgrace and fall of Wuerl's predecessor, now-former-Cardinal McCarrick, and the Pennsylvania grand jury report.

Abolish the Priesthood?

James Carroll's latest in the Atlantic has stirred up quite a bit of response. This is a long article filled with a lot of ideas that Carroll has expressed elsewhere. Below the break I have given what I take to be his core ideas about what "abolishing" and "detaching" would mean. 

My response is that Christians who were repulsed by the Church of Constantine "detached" themselves by "withdrawing" i.e. (monks were literally "withdrawn ones") either into the desert in the case of men, or the inner rooms of houses in the case of women. They both focused upon scripture primarily the psalms plus readings which became their Divine Office in contrast to the incense and lights and ceremonies of morning and evening prayer in the new Cathedrals. In effect they continued practices or reading the scriptures which were common in the early house churches. They did not however attempt to celebrate the Eucharist on their own. Many of the males who lived as solitaries did not partake in the Eucharist for weeks, months, years or even decades (depending upon distance). Priests were not encouraged to become members of their communities, and when they did they were under the authority of the Abbot who of course was not ordained.(This would later be true of Benedict's rule). Christians, including the bishops, recognized their holy lives and did not judge them in terms of their participation in the cathedral liturgies (In fact some bishops even encouraged the virgins not to disturb these assemblies by coming to them).  

The Divine Office has been center of my  prayer life since about eighth grade. It has had many different expressions. I begin with the Short Breviary for nuns, graduated to the complete Office in English. When I was at Saint John's during Vatican II sometimes I chanted Latin Vespers with the monks upstairs, sometimes the Gelineau psalms with the brothers down stairs. For the last two decades I have often celebrated Vespers on Saturday evening with the local Orthodox parish (they consider me an associate member). A Benedictine monastery in Europe still celebrates the old Office in Latin; it is just like being back at Saint John's; I have a copy of the Monastic Antiphonal. I really do not feel the clergy are at the center of my prayer life .Saint Thomas in New York records their many Vespers services.  Many times "celebration wise" the Sunday Mass is the liturgical low point of my week. But I see that as the clergy's problem not mine. I don't need the parish for music or education.  I do participate in parish life and make my talents and interest available to others. I believe in voluntary (unpaid) ministry so I don't support anyone with money. I do however give generously to the poor. I believe in a poor church (unpaid ministry) for the poor.

Catholics must detach themselves from the clerical hierarchy

DIVINE OFFICE on CATHOLIC TV

Yesterday I looked at Catholic TV on the internet to see if they were going to broadcast +Wilton Gregory's installation Mass (they did) and was delighted to find they are doing Morning Prayer (at 9 am) and Evening Prayer (at 9 pm) from the Divine Office.

I was even more delighted to find that it is archived Daily Archive of Divine Office. Only the current day is there. I do not know exactly when they are archived. Evening prayer appears sometime in the afternoon. I don't know if morning prayer appears before 9am.

What is even more interesting it is done by  Auxiliary Bishop Bob Reed who is also head of Catholic TV.  Here is Rocco's write up on his ordination.

While I am disappointed that this is not done with a group, I am elated that a bishop is taking on this very neglected part of the liturgy.

What a wonderful thing for many of our elderly who have little to do but watch TV. In our parish we have some shut-in's who pray for the parish. I suspect many people would be pleased each day to pray Morning and Evening Prayer with a bishop.

The Divine Office is the prayer of the Church, and what more fitting icon than a bishop.

Don't Let the Law Get in His Way

 This article from Atlantic is a good read. I know, I know, we are all up to here with the outrageous things Trump does. That works to his advantage. Even the subject of this article will disappear  with the Twitter cycle. His plans to pardon a phalanx of war criminals for Memorial Day (may as well do a posthumous job for Goebbels and Himmler while he is at it) will rise. And they will fall to his plan to hijack A Capitol Fourth and turn the event into Triumph of the Donald. (Leni, where are you, now that he needs you?)
 But while we are here, it is worth pausing to note that breaking laws has become standard operating procedure for Costa Lago Nostra. A section from the Atlantic piece by Garrett Epps:

 ... 26 US code § 6103(f)(1) ...  reads: “Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary [of the Treasury] shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request,” subject only to a requirement that the return be considered in closed session.
 Served with a proper demand by Representative Richard Neal, the Ways and Means Committee chair, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin responded, “I have determined that the Committee’s request lacks a legitimate legislative purpose,” and that he therefore would not comply.
Let’s begin at the beginning: To paraphrase Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny, Section 6103 is what we lawyers call a “statute.” It was adopted by Congress as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1976. The final Senate vote on the bill was 81–1; in the House, it was 405–2. It was signed by President Gerald Ford (for those scoring at home, a Republican). Under the United States Constitution, Article VI, Section 2, it, like all statutes, is “the supreme law of the land.” It contains no provision requiring a “legislative purpose” at all. That’s not an oversight. Congress isn’t always legislating. It has other functions; one of them is to investigate officials and even private citizens, which has been part of Congress’s mission since its 1790 inquiry into the financier Robert Morris’s management of federal revenue during the Revolution.

 The incumbent brings us something new under the sun almost every week. But the substitution of himself  for the law should give us all a little extra cause for concern this week.

Francis addresses the sexual abuse of minors - Updated

Update 5/21/2019 10:33 pm: At the bottom of the post I've referenced some views posted by Philip Lawler at First Things.

-----

On May 9, Francis issued motu proprio (that is, via an executive order) some universal church laws to address critical shortcomings in the church's handling of cases of the sexual abuse of minors.

So, if women had a voice in the Catholic church.....

Article in the WaPo today about the impact in Nevada of having women hold the majority in the state legislature. Of note, both the GOP and Dem women are on the same page on many issues.

CARSON CITY, Nev. — She didn’t plan to say it. Yvanna Cancela, a newly elected Democrat in the Nevada Senate, didn’t want to “sound crass.” But when a Republican colleague defended a century-old law requiring doctors to ask women seeking abortions whether they’re married, Cancela couldn’t help firing back.

“A man is not asked his marital status before he gets a vasectomy,” she countered — and the packed hearing room fell silent.

Since Nevada seated the nation’s first majority-female state legislature in January, the male old guard has been shaken up by the perspectives of female lawmakers. Bills prioritizing women’s health and safety have soared to the top of the agenda. Mounting reports of sexual harassment have led one male lawmaker to resign. And policy debates long dominated by men, including prison reform and gun safety, are yielding to female voices.

Set 500 More Places for Dinner - Update

Never mind UPDATE below

Wouldn't you just know?
 The head of the Border Patrol in Miami informed local officials that they'll be dropping off 500 border crossers here in two weeks. Another 500 will go to Broward County, just south of us. And each county will get 500 more every month in perpetuity.
 Take that for voting for Hillary.
 Gov. Ron DeSantis, a huge Trump booster, is working the phones to find out what the hell is going on. He wasn't given a heads-up. The Border Patrol doesn't know much. Like: How will the wannabe immigrants get from wherever they are processed to wherever they are going when they get here. Officials are calling around. They may get answers if they can find the proper password. "All honor to the Donfather" is my guess.
 The implication is that the feds will bring them in and drop them off, and we can figure out what to do with them.
 A lot of really stupid things will be said in the next few weeks. But Florida has handled this sort of thing before. Operation Pedro Pan brought in and resettled 14,000 unaccompanied minors from Cuba in a Scarlet Pimpernel-type operation in the early 1960s. Father Bryan  O. Walsh of the Catholic Welfare Bureau was the Pimpernel, and many Miami-Dade County Republicans got here that way. In those days there was a Democrat in the White House, and resettlement was part of the plan.
 This time, there is talk of a "plan." But nobody who knows will say what it is. Of course, this new operation leaves out the the county that might vote for Trump and rewards two Democratic counties that never will, but I can't think that that has anything to do with how we were chosen.
 The mayor of Fort Lauderdale beat me to suggesting we house them in Trump properties. The social season here is over, and Mar-a-Lago's staff has returned to Eastern Europe, whence Trump imports them each year. Nothing's going on over there until after Labor Day.
 That's as close to a plan as anything the Trump administration has vouchsafed us.

UPDATE:  Yesterday the Customs and Border Patrol told officials no immigrants will be coming "at this time." That's all. No "at a later time," no "at no time," no "just before the 2020 election.' Nor have any of the outraged Democrats and EQUALLY outraged Trumpoleons of Florida been able to find out who made the decision to send them, who made the decision not to send them, or what the Border Patrol expected us to do with them.  Sort of a case of the right hand not knowing what the extreme right hand was doing.
  

A quick thought on the 2020 Democratic primaries

When Donald Trump announced his run for the presidency a few years ago, I was hardly alone in thinking, This man is a clown, he stands zero chance of getting the nomination.  Of course, in retrospect I was badly mistaken.  It seems to me, in hindsight, that four factors worked to Trump's advantage in the 2016 Republican primary race:

Stop the War-Monger

Some catch-up on To War or Not War.

The Guardian in this opinion piece reminds us of John Bolton's fabulous career of war-mongering. "Bolton has no qualms about manipulating or outright ignoring intelligence to advance his agenda, which is exactly what’s happening right now."  (no pay-wall!)

NYTimes: Wendy Sherman former state dept. under secretary and one of the negotiators for the Iran nuclear agreement reviews the run-up to the current war-mongering and urges European leaders, Congress, and, I suppose, the rest of us to STOP!  And this warning:

"Finally, it is crucial that the news media in the United States and elsewhere continue its crusade for the facts about what is going on with Iran. We cannot repeat the days before the Iraq war when even many of our most reliable news outlets repeated and amplified what was, in fact, a flimsy case for war."  Okay NYT...you know who you were!.....

Just in:

WASHINGTON — President Trump has told his acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, that he does not want to go to war with Iran, according to several administration officials, in a message to his hawkish aides that an intensifying American pressure campaign against the clerical-led government in Tehran must not escalate into open conflict."

5/17: The Pompeo-Bolton Feud: Read all about it!

And 40 Other Famous People

 I was reminded this very morning of what makes me scream in contemporary media "coverage" of this and that. They had the drawing yesterday for post positions for the Preakness Stakes (this Saturday), and my paper told me a horse named Improbable had drawn the 4th position and was the early favorite.
 Thirteen other horses will be in the race. My media outlet decided I don't need to know who they are.
 I have had a running scream going over "Felicity Huffman and many other famous parents," the defendants in the college admissions scandal. Since the story is about money, not TV shows, I would think the defendants would be "(The richest family, whoever it is, or the famous family that invested most into getting their child a leg up) and many other famous parents."
 Frankly, when I looked up those other famous people (on a court filing), I had never heard of almost all of them, rich and famous as they might be. But  I never heard of Ms. Huffman before her current 15 minutes of fame began, either.
 Pimlico Race Course has a Web site (not a very good one, btw), so I can get the names the news media didn't give of the famous horses the same way I got the names of the "other famous people." It does make me wonder what the news media have to do that is more important than answering the first question in the old Who, What, When, Where, How.

UPDATE. The first three post positions will be used by WAR of Will, Bourbon WAR and WARRIOR'S Charge. Do the folks in Baltimore know something about Iran we don't know?

Two tragedies in six chapters

Here is how two groups of news stories, true, tragic and briefly connected, have unfolded over the last month:

A Little Lie for God

 Alabama lawmakers went ahead and voted to make abortion effectively illegal. The bill, heading for the governor at this writing, flatly defies Roe v Wade and subsequent Supreme Court decisions. In the normal course of events, a lower federal court will strike down the Alabama law, the lower court will be upheld on appeal and the Supreme Court won’t even look at it. Dead issue.

 But Alabama will be only one of 14 states with laws that violate the 45-year-old precedent. What’s that all about?

 My right-to-life friends believe that this is the moment for the Supreme Court to reverse itself on abortion. They are ginning up cases from one state to another to give the justices a case in which they can do what the right-to-lifers are sure they are ready to do.

 With the Supreme Court, even certainties are uncertain. They right-to-lifers thought Nirvana was at hand when President Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy and got him confirmed. Nirvana never came. At their confirmation hearings, under oath the Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch called Roe “settled law,” and Brett Kavanaugh called it “settled precedent.”

 But Chief Justice John Roberts’ court has not been all that respectful of settled law. Just this week, it reversed settled precedent about who can sue states and how.

 So, could Kavanaugh and Gorsuch have been lying under oath? Testifying with forked tongues and  fingers crossed, so to speak?

 The right-to-life movement, proudly and hopefully, thinks so.
 And that is, they say, what God wants. Does He?

Stand by me

This past Sunday, which was both the 4th Sunday of Easter and Mother's Day, the wives of the deacons of our parish preached.  This is the homily text from my wife Therese.

Cardinal Restores Power

This story isn't about Game of Thrones, Vatican style.
It's about Cardinal Konrad Krajewksi restoring electric power to a homeless shelter in Rome after service had been cut by the utility company. He is the papal almoner, and one might expect that he restored power by pulling some strings, calling in a favor, or directing some funds, since his agency is in charge of charitable distributions for the pope. No, apparently he restored electricity to the shelter by lifting up a manhole cover, going down and reconnecting the building to the power main.
I don't know about you, but I'm impressed.
From the NCR article:

Gearing up? Or already at war?

This morning’s news reports that Saudi oil tankers (Guardian) have been attacked or sabotaged in a UAE port. True? Or Not? Hard to tell.
     Meanwhile Secretary of State Pompeo(ous) is in Brussels meeting with EU negotiators who are trying to salvage the Iran nuclear agreement. Presumably he is telling them they can’t do that.
     Reports last week had Bolton and Pompeo seeming to promote open conflict with Iran, either behind Trump’s back or, imho, probably in collusion with him.
     Much of this appears to be on behalf of Israel, (cf. the overthrow of Sadaam Hussain and the war in Iraq). See Andrew Bacevich’s review in Sunday’s NYTimes.
     In the meantime, loblog has this essay by Elham Portatheur …, an Iranian woman studying in the U.S., reporting that we are already at war:

“Those who feel relieved by thinking that Trump will not engage in an actual war and is merely interested in making threats should realize that the war has already begun. U.S. sanctions are producing a level of suffering comparable to that of wartime. Sanctions in fact are a war waged by the United States against the Iranian working- and middle-classes. These groups struggle to make ends meet as unemployment dramatically increases even as the inflation rate skyrockets. The same people that the Trump administration is pretending to want to set free are the ones that are hit hardest by current U.S. policies in the Middle East.”

Update: As far as I can tell, actual evidence of an attack has yet to emerge. Obviously this raises the question of whether there was actually an attack; if there was, what did it consist in and who carried it out? Iran? Israel? Saudis? etc.  raising the possibility of a false flag operation.
May 14: NYT story: Headline: White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran: in Echos of Iraq war.  Facts presented: Bolton presses for more troops...
Update 2: A critique of the NYTimes story at Loblog arguing that the reporters are stupid or beating the drums of war. Headline: "Newspaper of Wreckage."  IMO: The reporters may be stenographers as the writer claims, but not clear they are beating the drums for war.
May 15: The International Crisis Group calls for taking the U.S. and Iran off a collision course.

Historic Decisions

  To celebrate the Bicentennial back in 1976 some theater folks thought it would be a good idea to produce a musical history of the presidency and call it 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They had Leonard Bernstein for the music and Alan Jay Lerner for book and lyrics. Ken Howard would play all the presidents, and Patricia Routledge all the first ladies. And, while they were at it, they would show us the downstairs staff, played by Gilbert Price and Emily Yancy. Great idea, great team, great cast.

 What could possibly go wrong?

 The finale, to begin with.  Chronologically it would have to end with Jerry Ford, a nice guy but the only president who was never nationally elected. He had replaced Nixon who fled articles of impeachment. Nixon followed Johnson, who would end the show waist deep in the Big Muddy. And so on. A decision had to be made: History would end with Teddy Roosevelt.

 When you undertake Big History, you must make big decisions about what to put in and what to leave out. And these days put-ins have to include people George Bancroft and Samuel Eliot Morison left out. Jill Lepore, in These Truths, gives Jane Franklin almost as much attention as her brother Ben, and notes that Frederick Douglass was the most photographed man in pre-Civil War America.

 Lepore  tells you things you may not have known, like what happened to the bricks from the wall that named Wall Street. And that Samuel F.B. Morse developed his code originally to give the government a secret way of communicating when the Catholics tried to take over his country. She weaves such goodies seamlessly into the history of the country from the first white settlers and black slaves to the Trump election.

When Not Making a Decision is a Decision

I don't always agree with NCR columnist Jamie Manson, but I thought today's article, Why Does Francis Passion for Unity and Justice Stop Short of Women? was spot on.
From the article:

"In follow up comments to the Union of Superiors General (UISG) — the women religious whose dialogue with the pope prompted him to call the study commission on the women's diaconate —in Rome on May 10, the pope said that the individual members of the commission will pursue studies on their own but remained ambiguous about whether he would call to commission back together."

"I am not afraid of studies," Francis said aboard the plane. "

Comey's Back

I am a great fan of James Comey's book, A Higher Loyalty. It got a mixed reaction from the punditry and Trump certainly went after him. As I recall the word "showboater" appeared as a common characterization. I read the book anyway and urged Commonweal readers to READ THE BOOK  too. It is now out in paperback with a new preface.

Among my points to CWL readers: "Comey’s story from childhood through adolescence, education, marriage, fatherhood, and prosecutorial career is of a person who examines his conscience. He reports finding, often enough, that his words and deeds need course correction, apologies, and setting the record straight. His wife Patrice, in pithy phrases, seems to serve as true north for the searching needle of his moral compass. In short, he operates in the mode of David Riesman’s “inner-directed man.” That is not a plus in Trump world, and apparently not in the media scrum that reports on that world."

That was a bit over a year ago. Comey seemed to disappear except for a congressional hearing and a recent NYT op-ed piece. Last night he was on CNN's Town Hall being interviewed by Anderson Cooper and questioned by a group of young people (mostly George Washington U. students). They were succinct. And so was Comey. He was also thoughtful, sharp, and too-the-point on our current situation. In short, he was impressively sane and reassuring in the midst of the Trump-Congress face-off.

He repeats a phrase from the op-ed, Trump "eats people's souls," and in the CNN Interview, he gives a credible account of  how that works.

To impeach or not?

In a recent post that surveyed the various ways that President Trump courteously could be shown the White House door (presumably accompanied by polite expressions of the wish that it not slam him in the backside on the way out), I expressed the opinion that impeachment was a non-starter.  My reasoning was practical: there is no chance that it would succeed, so long as Republicans hold the Senate.

But in Commonweal, Rand Richards Cooper does a deeper dive on the question, Should the president be impeached? 

No Decision on Women Deacons

From this article on the America Magazine site:
"In a press conference on the flight from Skopje to Rome, Pope Francis revealed that the commission he set up two years ago to examine the role of women in the early church did not reach agreement on the question of women deacons. He said the members of the commission had quite different positions, and after two years it stopped work. He made clear that the issue needed further study but did not say who would do this work."

How to keep President Trump in office

CNN is reporting that a large group of former Justice Department officials - essentially, former federal prosecutors - have signed an open letter which offers the opinion that the obstruction of justice findings in the Mueller Report would be prosecutable, if the president was a private citizen.

I've Got the Horse Right Here

 I sense that this is not a racing crowd. But since the formerly most powerful world leader has chosen to enter the discussion with a ridiculous tweet, Saturday’s Kentucky Derby seems to be a matter of pith and moment. It beats thinking about bff Kim Jung Un.

 The president called it an example of political correctness, but he knows as much about horse racing as he does about casino gambling. And who else ever went bankrupt owing a casino? My take, which I will get to, is that the incident is another example of the tyranny of our toys.

Becoming Catholic in the age of scandal

The New York Times did something good: it published a story about the church as I experience it from week to week and year to year.  This story looks at some of those in the greater NYC area who completed their sacramental initiation during the Easter Vigil.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of all for the church, in an age when it must re-evangelize cultures like ours, is to proclaim the Good News into the headwind of a media framing of the church that is dominated by scandals and in which stories are fed to the media by victims and their professional advocates.  This story is welcome.

Single parents and welcome

This evening, I attended a function at our parish.  Among the conversations in which I took part: a single mom (divorced) mentioned that it took something like 15 years for her to be convinced that she is welcome to be a parishioner.  To describe what it felt like up until that time, she used the metaphor of our crying room: she said it was as though there was a thick pane of glass separating her from the parish community.