Boris gets his comeuppance from...

...the U.S. Congress.

Peter King, I've heard of; he's from Long Island. Richard Neal from Massachusetts, I've never heard of. One Republican and one Democrat, they are co-chairs of the Friends of Ireland caucus in Congress (never heard of it). It is said to have 54 members.

PM Johnson and Pres. Trump are said to be working on a UK-US trade deal when and if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. Johnson has made dropping the backstop between the Republic and Northern Ireland a condition of further talks with the EU. The EU says ppppppp...(not an exact quote).

The invaluable Guardian (no paywall) has the story, which declares that the U.S. population is one-tenth Irish-American! Even Nancy Pelosi: "The Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has said that a US-UK trade deal has no chance whatsoever of passing in Congress. Over the weekend, a committee of former members of Congress and foreign policy officials said “all of Irish America will support the Speaker right down the line.”  Load your shamrocks!!

Did Marianne Williamson just win tonight's Democratic debate?

Apparently some pundits think so.  What think'st thou?

Saintly items

Four items about sainthood that have caught my attention during the month of July.

Which Progressive Ideas Are Most Popular?

Here is an interesting article on the Vox site, by Matthew Yglesias.
"A new Marist poll testing the popularity of a bunch of progressive ideas leads to a slightly tedious truth: Some are popular and some are not popular, and there’s not much of a pattern determining which are which."
So which ideas are most popular?  Read on to find out.

Farewell Concert

This post is segueing a bit off Jim Pauwels' posts last week on the music conference he attended.
This article appeared this morning in our regional daily, about the last concert appearance of the St. Louis Jesuits, which is to take place on Sept. 29 in (who would have guessed!) St. Louis.
From the article:

But Trump is so much better on Life issues

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Federal Government to Resume Capital Punishment After Nearly Two Decade Lapse

Attorney General William P. Barr has directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to adopt a proposed Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol—clearing the way for the federal government to resume capital punishment after a nearly two decade lapse, and bringing justice to victims of the most horrific crimes.  The Attorney General has further directed the Acting Director of the BOP, Hugh Hurwitz, to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society—children and the elderly.
“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President,” Attorney General Barr said.  “Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding.  The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

...
The Catechism of the Catholic Church:
2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes.  In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state.  Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,^[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide”.

(Latest revision, approved by Pope Fracis)

A scorpion instead of an egg

 There is an on-line newsletter I’ve wanted to share with you, and now I have a hook.

 A U.S. visa not many people know about can be given to foreigners who are trafficked to the United States and freed, either by their own efforts or by law enforcement. The visas give them a chance to work here legally while they get their lives back in order. A freed victim has a lot of problems, not least of which may be that someone back home was paid for his, or usually her, body and services, and the trafficker may want revenge.

 Lots of problems.

 The Trump administration doesn’t see a freed victim of human trafficking with those visas. It sees deportable immigrants.

Bratwurst on Raisin-Nut Bread UPDATE with mustard

This is a diversion.

Yesterday, while President Grotesque claimed victory over Robert Mueller, England's grotesque was moving into 10 Downing Street.

Fintan O'Toole, (Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain), has provided a profile of Boris at the New York Review of Books: "The Ham of Fate." Of course, it is entertaining.

He explains Boris Johnson's penchant for doing the wrong thing by light of a character who appears in Johnson's novel Seventy-Two Virgins: "The Greek philosophers found akrasia mysterious—why would people knowingly do the wrong thing? But Johnson knows the answer: they do so, in England at least, because knowingness is essential to being included. You have to be “in on the joke”—and Johnson has shown just how far some English people will go in order not to look like they are not getting it."

O'Toole does a fine job of explaining Boris as he did explaining the English and Brexit in Heroic Failure. Our previous discussion.  He has the keen eye of the Irish for seeing and describing English foibles, and does not hesitate to compare Johnson and Trump, among other things declaring that they are both racists, in case there was any doubt. He doesn't explain why Trump does the wrong thing--perhaps he doesn't get "knowingness."

UPDATE: Commonweal has a profile of Borish Johnson  by Austen Ivereigh.  Somewhat friendlier, but not uncritical. Maybe Ivereigh understand "knowingness."

Mueller speaks

So far (9:28 AM), the Democrats on Judiciary Committee are reading the report (with questions to Mueller giving us non-readers an earful...the Republicans seem to be triangulating with questions about the special counsel law and other items and events not in the report. Their purpose I guess is to undermine the legitimacy of the report.

Mr. Mueller! Here are some questions.

Robert Mueller's appearance before two Congressional committees on Wednesday has prompted people who have read the report to supply questions lest Congress persons get distracted by the need for a little publicity.

Here are James Comey's questions  at "Lawfare":

If I were a member of Congress with five minutes to question Robert Mueller, I would ask short questions drawn from the report’s executive summaries.

Volume One: Russia

Did you find that there were a series of contacts between the Trump campaign and individuals with ties to the Russian government? (p. 5)
In particular, did you find that a Trump foreign policy adviser learned that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails? (pp. 5-6)
Did you find that the Trump foreign policy adviser said the Trump campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to candidate Clinton? (p. 6)
Did you find that senior members of the Trump campaign met with Russian representatives at Trump Tower after being told in an email that the meeting was part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump? (p. 6)
Did you find that, despite the fact that candidate Trump said he had "nothing to do with Russia," his organization had been pursuing a major Moscow project into the middle of the election year and that candidate Trump was regularly updated on developments? (vol 1, p. 5: vol 2, p. 19  
Did the Trump campaign report any of its Russian contacts to the FBI?
Not even the indications from the Russian government that it could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to candidate Clinton?

Volume Two: Obstruction

Did you reach a judgment as to whether the president had committed obstruction of justice crimes?
Did you find substantial evidence that the president had committed obstruction of justice crimes?
For example, did you find that the president directed the White House counsel to call the acting attorney general and tell him the special counsel must be removed? (p. 4)
Did you find that the White House counsel decided he would rather resign than carry out that order? (p. 4)
Did you find that the president later directed the White House counsel to say he had not been ordered to have the special counsel removed? (p. 6)
Did you find that the president wanted the White House counsel to write a false memo saying he had not been ordered to have the special counsel removed? (p. 6)
Did you find that the White House counsel refused to do that because it was not true? (p. 6)
Did you find that the president repeatedly asked a private citizen—his former campaign manager—to deliver a message to the attorney general to restrict the special counsel to investigating only future campaign interference? (p. 5)

Neal Katyal at the NYTimes: Three Simple Questions

First, did your report find there was no collusion?

Second, did your report find there was no obstruction?

Third, did your report give the president complete and total exoneration?

 Add your own questions...Or those of others.

In the meantime, the Justice Dept. has its own list: Questions that Mueller should not answer!   Is this obstruction? Or what?  Washington Post.

Biblical criticism and preaching

Some thoughts on formation for preachers, and the impact of formation on what is preached in Catholic parishes.

Listen

This is my homily for today, the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C.  Today's readings are here.

Forgiveness? Or Enabling?

 There is a question that seems only to get knottier as I grow older. I think about it a lot. This weekend I found it elegantly posed in a book review in The New York Times.

 Let me preface it by saying I am not mad at anybody. There is no family member who done me wrong to whom I will never speak again, as there seems to be in many families. Maybe that’s because I’m an only child. But, personally, I have no trouble loving my enemies or praying that I may be forgiven in the same measure as I forgive others. A friend of mine often said, “Everybody has a sack of rocks to carry,” and there is wisdom in that. I can love someone through his sack of rocks. Heaven knows, enough people overlook mine.

 So on a personal level, I find the virtue of mercy easier than a lot of people. But then, when it gets political, reality stomps on the desire.

 Chris Lebron, a philosophy professor,  reviews Grace Will Lead Us Home by Jennifer Berry Hawes. It’s a book I’ll probably have to read about the before, during and after Dylan Roof killed nine people and wounded three at Emmanuel A.M.E. church, “Mother Emmanuel,” in Charleston in 2015. A lot stood out in that example of what someone called, without meaning Emmanuel, “American carnage.”  I hadn’t realized, for example, that Roof intentionally expended exactly 88 rounds of ammunition, the number which neo-Nazis use as  shorthand for “Heil, Hitler.”

50 Years Since the Future

Hard to believe that a half century has passed since man, specifically American man, first landed on the Moon.  Hard to believe I'm 70.  It was a boost to a Vietnam War-weary populace.  To me, still high on Teilhard, it seemed like a logical step in evolution.   Only a few year later, the visionless Nixon would terminate manned Moon exploration.  Dreams of an outpost on the Moon and Mars exploration evaporated.  All manned space efforts became Earth orbital.  The Space Shuttle, seemingly a good idea at the time, a reusable space truck, took over the bulk of NASA funding.  A beautiful tour-de-force in aerospace engineering, it turned out to be more expensive and  vulnerable than hoped for.  The idea of  sending big payloads into orbit accompanied by human lives proved to be a very costly proposition.  The Moon landing program launched many missions and they all, including Apollo XXIII came back alive.  Two shuttles and many lives were lost before the program was ended, leaving us dependent on the Russians for getting our astronauts to the space shuttle.  But still, even that very flawed program yielded lessons learned.  And the Moon landing program never really ended as a scientific endeavor.  The geological samples brought back have yielded knowledge about how we got here and are still being studied.  We now know the Earth and Moon were formed following a monstrous collision between two planets, giving birth to a new earth and its indispensable satellite.  Meanwhile, we've learned there is water on the moon and that makes the possibility of a permanent base more feasible.  There may be commercial rewards.  New technologies based on 21st Century engineering are being developed to return to the moon.  Private companies are involved and the Chinese seem to be enthusiastic.  More power to them.  Maybe we WILL return to the Moon and get on to Mars.  No easy task, lots of problems, especially the human form which is adapted to Earth.  You can't abandon Earth.  Our fate will always be attached to this planet, most probably.  But we can send tendrils into our immediate vicinity, the solar system.  I think its the next logical step in evolution.  Oh, it's expensive.  Why can't we address our problems here with the money?  Good question.  Let's see how much money there is after reducing our military budget to the level of the summation of China's and Russia's.

Chant

Among the workshops I attended at the National Association of Pastoral Musicians (NPM) convention this week was one on the use of liturgical chant.  The presenter, Richard Clark, is the director of music at Boston's cathedral.  He is a graduate of the Berklee Conservatory and obviously has a passion for the musical form known as Gregorian chant.  He doesn't come across as a reform-the-reform crank; rather, he has spent his professional life working to integrate the church's tradition of chanted prayer into the reformed liturgy.  His presentation has spurred the following reflections.

Illness and faith, part 2

Before getting to the point of this post, I should take a moment to explain why I'm at this pastoral music convention.

Illness and faith, part 1

This week my wife and I are attending the 42nd annual convention of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians (NPM).  I'll be blogging from the convention hall and from my room at night for the next few days.

Justice John Paul the First

 The obituaries of Justice John Paul Stevens today make him out to be the leader of the liberal bloc on the Supreme Court. That's a little over the top, but over the top is standard for obits, and obits at age 99 provoke even more topping up.
 What Stevens was is a kind of Republican who no longer exists. He was appointed by President Gerald Ford, another Republican of the kind that no longer exists. The kind is the centrist Republican. Such, with centrist Democrats, are the people who made government work in this country before the role of government became messaging a temperamental diva's fragile ego.
 Justice Stevens was a centrist who stood still while the Court moved right. He retired expecting it to move back again. He died with it gone right for several more decades to come.
 One of the opinions for which he is being remembered is his dissent in the appalling Bush v Gore 2000 election case, which he ended by saying:

 Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

(A bit more after the break:)

The Evolution of EWTN

Check out this article in NCR about how EWTN morphed from a shoestring-and-a-prayer startup in the early 1980s, to the present day behemoth empire supported by moneyed interests.  And I'm talking about BIG money.
In the early days I admired Mother Angelica; a feisty old nun who at times stood up to bishops.  As nuns sometimes have had to do in the past.  And EWTN was an effort at a tv media presence, where in the past there had been no Catholic televised media presence (at least not in a meaningful way).  As far as content goes, it was pretty straight-laced and conservative,  but it served as a counterbalance to other, more liberal influences. It focused on spirituality, catechetics, and a televised Mass.
But things have changed. It is no longer a conversation balancer. It has become an alternative magisterium, more or less Fox News at prayer. And presents a point of view often at odds with Pope Francis.

Spot on?

   A white woman from Ohio asked Gillibrand about white privilege.    Her answer was spot on.

So rules VOX.   Read it.   Does it solve the Democrats problem?

 

 

Millennials Becoming Nuns (Updated)

Check out this article.  It appeared today in, of all places, Huffington Post, as their lead article.  It discusses the uptick in women religious vocations. I don't know if the numbers are statistically significant, but interesting anyway. It follows the story of several women contemplating that life, as well as several who have been nuns for many years. It is a longish article, and surprisingly sympathetic, given the usual slant of HuffPost on things Catholic. Worth a look.

Update:  It's not the lead article any more, they moved on to the upcoming ICE raids this weekend  (which follow the usual Trump custom of never taking the weekend off from doing/saying/Twittering things awful or outrageous.)  But the nun article is still there if you follow the link.

Hymn Society Tournament

HYMN SOCIETY TOURNAMENT LINK

The Hymn Society (mostly a Protestant Organization) is having its annual meeting next week. They are having a Tournament to pick the greatest hymn of all time,  Starting with 32 hymns they are now down to eight. During the annual meeting they will have the play offs. Finals are in bold below with a recap of the action to date. The link has all the specific percentages, also has links for more information about the competitors and how initial seeds were chosen.

What of the following are your favor hymns? Which one have  you heard in your parish?  Which have you never heard?  What favorite hymns are missing?

Florida Principal ducks and flunks - update

I suppose I ought to say something about the former principal of Spanish River High School, since it is another “Florida man” story -- in this case, “Florida principal” doing something the rest of the country finds profoundly weird.

  He is weird. But this is a case in which weirdness surrounds him.

  You probably saw the case in your local paper, here  or on TV . A parent didn’t think the school was doing enough to Remember the Holocaust, and the principal said he wasn’t forcing the Holocaust on people who believe otherwise. The mother persisted. The teacher came back on Email with the story’s money quote:

  “I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee. I do allow information about the Holocaust to be presented and allow students and parents to make decisions about it accordingly. I do the same with information about slavery.”

 And it hits the fan after the break.

On Nailing Jello to a Wall

From an interesting and disturbing article originating in the Washington Post, carried by the Omaha World Herald:

"In the halcyon days of the Internet, a vision took hold that in a vast global network, no single point could control. Rather, the Internet would flow like water around obstacles. Tim Berners-Lee, a web pioneer, said it was originally intended to be a “universal space,” not controlled by a single government or company. President Bill Clinton declared in 2000 that China controlling the Internet in its country would be “like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”

A malapropism walks into a bar....

For grammarians and literature buffs who need a smile today:

A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

This morning we sang:

"Confirm thy soul in self-control and liberty in law."

So Apropos!

It worked in the USA; why not in Rome?

 The NY Times July 4 story on the Francis-Putin meeting had a whole lot of interesting nuggets for those of us who live in a a media environment in which news stops at the water's edge.  But this one I found especially intriguing:

In a recent interview with The Financial Times, in which Mr. Putin declared the end of Western liberalism, he was asked whether religion would play a greater role in national culture and cohesion.

“This is exactly why I will now say a few words about Catholics,” he said, embarking on what seemed like a defense of the traditions of the Catholic Church.

“Sometimes I get the feeling that these liberal circles are beginning to use certain elements and problems of the Catholic Church as a tool for destroying the church itself,” Mr. Putin said. “This is what I consider to be incorrect and dangerous.”

 Russian electronic interference with the election processes of the U.S. (2016),  France, Italy and other countries has always been aimed at -- in addition to supporting the more domestically divisive candidate -- turning the national recipients against each other. Obviously, there are always fractures to work with. So here you see Putin acting like his disinformation agencies in trying to widen existing fractures.
 The technique is obvious once you see it. Of course, if you are on the (temporarily) winning side, there is no reason to look.

The Length

To Margaret's post on Turkey about a week ago, I made a comment where I suggested she (or you) might want to read Orhan Pamuk and I recommended Istanbul (his autobiography) and an novel called Snow.

She responded:

Pamuk: his book about Istanbul is fascinating. Though he be a novelist, I find them a bit of a slog...Snow and Red being the ones I struggled with. It reminded me how important deep cultural references can look to outsiders. Ditto "The Time Regulation Machine" by Tanpinar (recommended by the very Western grandson). It's book marked at page 7. Maybe I should try again.

I would agree with her that his novels, at least are a slog.  I went from Snow to The Black Book.  I didn't want them to be a slog and in my case, I looked for reviews that might mention something about their slogginess.  The thing about it is that they are very good prose, but in a way they also feel endless, but without any kind of page turning narrative to keep one on the edge of one's seat.  (Shame on me).

And I found one interesting review (that I can't locate now to link to) that said that what looks to us like slogginess (sorry, I like this new word) is actually "Turkishness".  The writer said that Turkish literature often has lots of side stories and digressions and that people like these. This tendency seems a bit strange to us.  The most sloggy recent American novel  that I can think of is David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which was truly infinite, at least as far as I was concerned.  And if I remember, it's infinitude was considered one of the strange things about it.

But our own literature used to be longer in the Turkish sense.  Old novels that I was (at the time) forced to read in school like Tristam Shandy seemed to go on forever, because, it turned out, they did.  Once someone gave me a copy of The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr by ETA Hoffman, written in the early 19th century, and I discovered this long book had been abridged in the edition I received because, explained the editor, modern audiences would no longer tolerate its length.

Now the late Ivan Illich suggested that the computer age would cause a revolution in reading similar to the revolution caused by the invention of movable type; similar in the sense that would create a radical change in the way people read.  I have noticed that novels seem to be getting shorter.  In a writing group I sometimes participate in, the younger members (and they are all younger members at this point) all want to write "flash fiction" or "flash poetry".  In our public readings, we are asked to keep things to 800 words.  I once wrote a detective story that was exactly 1,000 words (I called it The 1,000 Word Noir) and was told it was too long to present.  I taught a course in sociology online a about a year ago and found that the students were confused and dismayed that I would write a thousand words or more in responses to their answers to my questions.  I ask younger people what's going on, and I am usually told that we are now in a sort of "age of facts".  I have been told that if one can't communicate the essence of the novel in a summary, no one is going to read it.  Along with this, I have been quite surprised at how little my high school and college age kids have to read.  And, how little they are willing to read.  I try to explain to them that a summary of a book, especially a novel, does no more than spoil the book and that the meat is in the prose.  But they don't believe it.

I throw all of this out there as simply an observation.  People our age read differently than younger people in general.  I blame fucking computers.  (Sorry, but I feel very strongly about this).  But I also think that it is part of the commodification of everything, including time and art.  And I think we are poorer for it.

It is this cultural tendency more than any other that I can think of that makes me afraid for the future.

Turned Up & Tuned In

Happy to report the fireflies have returned. Cold evenings, sometimes in the forties, were worrisome. But last night and tonight they are out and about glowing in the darkness.

The Fall of the Republic

 "If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable, it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory,but from a conviction of national innocence, information and benevolence."
  Inaugural address of the second President, who knew all about Independence Day
 

"Big 4th of July in D.C. 'Salute to America. The Pentagon & our great Military Leaders are thrilled to be doing this & showing to the American people, among other things, the strongest and most advanced Military anywhere in the World. Incredible Flyovers & biggest ever Fireworks!"
-- Tweet by 45th President who knows nothing about Independence Day

The Democrats' shortlist (Updated)

In the next few months, the field of Democratic candidates is expected to be sharply reduced.