The Working Document for the Amazonian Synod UPDATED

The date for the beginning of the Synod for Bishops for the Pan Amazon Region is fast approaching.  The Synod is scheduled to take place from October 6-27, 2109. Here is the link for the working document for the Synod.  The document, though lengthy, is worth reading in its entirety.

Unbuild it, and they will lose

 Sport rarely comes up here, but this contribution is about a moral problem. I am referring to the business tactic of  “tanking.”  Looking ahead, the managers see a so-so season, and say to themselves, “If it is going to be bad anyway, let’s get rid of everybody who can pay this game, save a ton of money on salaries, and then in a few years we can be good again.”

 I am acutely aware of this, having two local teams in the tank. I haven’t found many good articles on the subject, but here is one about the Miami Marlins (baseball) last year when its tanking had begun. That it succeeded is shown by the Marlins’ record this year: 56 wins, 104 losses. Baltimore and Detroit, also in the tank, were even more pathetic. One of Marlin owners, promising things will get better, says fans should “turn out.” “Throw up” would be more likely. Attendance has been thin, but what can you expect when a team keeps finding new ways to lose?

  A Marlins spokesbabbler said earlier in the year that they would improve the fans’ “parking experience” as compensation.

 The Dolphins (football) opened the year by being blown out twice so badly that the color announcer at the second game had to admit that “everyone” knew they were going to be the worst team in football. The management thought behind the stinko perfomances is clearer than it is in baseball. The Dolphins traded for early picks in the college draft next spring, and now they desperately want the worst record in the league so they can draft first. A University of Alabama quarterback improbably named Tua Tagovailoa is the cause of their lust for loss. So this year, Alabama plays great, and the Dolphins play dead.

 Understand: Losing is management policy.

 And it is considered brilliant. There would be more comment about tanking if sports writers weren’t dazzled by brilliant management.

 In 1919, Deacon Jim may remember, the Chicago White Sox were the best team in baseball. But they lost the World Series because some gamblers paid them (more than their owner did for a whole season) to “throw” some games. One of the players was so good, he couldn’t play badly even when he tried to, a fact that later gave us the movie Field of Dreams.

 When their dastardly deeds became known, they were banned from baseball for life.

  Today, when sports managers do the same thing, they are called geniuses. The Black Sox should have told the judge they were simply getting ready to be good in 1920.

Uncaging the dragon

A social media mob cautionary tale.

Complacency

This is my homily for this weekend, the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C.  The readings for this weekend are here.

Mr. McGuire Goes to the House UPDATE

Watching the House Intelligence Committee hearings with Acting DNI Joseph McGuire was instructive and disturbing. It brought full-force, at least to my attention, the trap in which our political leaders and our political system is caught.

Some observations:

1. Acting director DNI McGuire, a recently retired military officer, appears to be a person of integrity and of patient good humor. But as “acting,” he was only a few days into the job when the whistle blower document landed on his desk. His initial actions—consulting the White House counsel and the Justice Dept. and AG Barr—can be explained perhaps by his “military” mind set and his first days in office. But as several Democrats argued, this was unfortunate and unethical. Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a press conference implied that his actions could be subject to legal action. McGuire did his best to explain, sometimes to defend his actions and sometimes to defer a direct answer. Obviously he could never now be confirmed in office, even in the unlikely event of Trump nominating him. 

Yet given this unique “orientation,” to the job and the ways of Washington, he might make an astute head of the national intelligence office in the Trump era. Instead, he has been trapped in the Trump penchant for making every appointment an “acting” so that he or she is dependent on him.

2. Grand-standing by members of both parties reinforces the image of self-serving (and pompous) careerist. By approaching their responsibilities to either defend Trump or attack him, many House members made spectacles of themselves, especially those whose prosecutorial skills hyped the temperature without adding to information or insight. Most are behaving for the benefit of a partisan media and their own next election campaign. If they thwart the obvious thrust of their opponents questioning of McGuire, so much the better. What a show of character to pass on his or her turn for a House member to say, thank you, Mr. Chairman, my questions have already been asked.

And yet, they too are trapped in appearing to be-in-the-know and on top of the issues. The “evidence”—an unofficial transcript and the whistleblowers actual charges—appeared within a day and an hour of the hearing, House Members could hardly have had time to absorb the information much less consult with others better versed in “intelligence” lingo and rules, to say nothing of ethics.

3. Mueller’s Report was mentioned in passing; perhaps it  seemed to have no immediate import for McGuire’s testimony. Yet, what we know so far about Trump and Ukraine is very much in the train of Mueller’s findings and conclusions. Trump as candidates and as president surrounds himself with willing accomplices. Whether he asks them to break the law or whether he knows they are upending norms and breaking the law, they participate in the Trump bubble, a culture of lying, cheating, exaggeration, and breaking the law. Trump and his entourage are willing and able, even enabled, to break the norms that keep our political system intact and functioning so long as the House of Representatives misses the mark and fails to connect the dots, intelligently and persuasively--at least enough to boot Trump from office, or failing that to keep him from a second term.

UPDATE: A little known factoid: Joseph Maguire and the man scurrying around doing Trump's bidding, Rudolf Giuliani, are both graduates of Manhattan College in NYC--a Christian Brothers school. 

Managing sex offenders - Updated

9/26/2019 12:05 am - I've added some additional thoughts at the bottom of the post, in response to some objections raised in the comments.

-----

The Albuquerque Journal is reporting that a confessed abusive San Francisco Archdiocese priest is living on parish grounds in Taos, NM (h/t Jim McCrea).  He should be banned forthwith - and then all branches of the church must formally renounce any/all responsibility for his whereabouts and activities.

America has two economies—and they’re diverging fast - Brookings

Interesting study out of Brookings this week.   Unfortunately, it seems the voters in Trump country still don't see through his false promises.

Notre Dame on the Abuse Crises UPDATED!!!

The Church Crisis: Where Are We Now?

The archived program is available through the above link; my comments in italics below the break.

Seems like old times in the Gasthaus

 Normally, a presidential speech to the United Nations is a big deal. But we don't live in normal times. President Trump spoke to the United Nations yesterday. Nobody laughed, unlike the response he got from the U.N. last year.
 Delegates from undeveloped nations looked at Trump and his acting British counterpart and muttered "If that's developed, we should stay un."
 But, as I say, once upon a time such a speech was such a big deal The New York Times would print the whole text. When texts became so easily and quickly available on-line, the Times stopped running them, but you can always go to the Supreme Court's site to read its decisions, and you used to be able to go to the White House to see presidential speeches. But that was in normal times. The new, improved White House doesn't make texts available. Only tweets and notes.
 If you want to know what the former leader of the free world had to say, you have to sit through the whole video. Or wait for the hardcover edition.
 Well, anyway. The U.N. speech was upstaged by the dirty, stinking, shameful Democrats finally starting impeachment proceedings. (And over one of his venial sins, while there are so many mortal sins to choose from.) However, the lines Mr. Trump and the White House and others hit upon as the theme of his immortal address are these:
  "The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots."
   Hmm, where did I hear something like that before. Oh, I remember.

Ukraine-Gate UPDATED

 Trump admits he discussed Biden with Ukraine, saying he was worried about corruption.
"The White House is considering releasing a transcript of President Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president, in which Trump pressed the foreign leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s family." 

Are We Incapable of Democracy?

Last week one of Jim McCrea's threads linked this article by Rick Shenkman, entitled "The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy". The subject is a paper by Shawn Rosenberg. From Shenkman's article:
"...Rosenberg, a professor at UC Irvine, was challenging a core assumption about America and the West. His theory? Democracy is devouring itself—his phrase — and it won’t last."

Some thoughts on DIY weddings

I attended a wedding this past weekend, for which the young spouses-to-be designed their own ceremony.  It left me thinking there is a lot to be said for ritual.

Iran and Saudi Arabia

Ok.  I freely admit I'm not smart enough to do foreign policy.  If indeed Iran was the bomber of Saudi oil refinery capacity over the weekend, such that it cut Saudi production in half and will take the Saudis weeks or months to recover, then, by the standards that have prevailed on the planet, how is that not an act of war?  And how does this not play into Benjamin Netanyahu's hands on the eve of an Israeli election?  And how does this not make Trump right and Europe wrong about the trustworthiness of the Iranian regime, vis a vis the nuclear treaty?

Apostasy Now, Schism (maybe) Later

Young Douthat has had another revelation about the Church In These Days. If you put it to music, it would go something like this:

I got schism, you got schism,

  all of God's children's got schism
When I get to heaven, gonna take off my schism

I'm gonna walk all over God's heaven

  Schism, Schism
Everybody talkin' bout schism ain't havin’ one

 Schism, Schism

I'm gonna walk all over God's heaven.

Douthat took off from Pope Francis’s comment that he prays there won’t be a schism, but there can always be one and we simply have to get on with it. Douthat then notes the (mostly) American anti-Francis fetishists who are more doctrinally Catholic than the pope, and with whom he has much sympathy. Because there has to be an equal and opposite contrast he mentions that  the German bishops are liberal crypto-heretics. And it’s the Germans (!) who are using their money (not Americans!) to further their schism.

But, he decides happily, as long as both sides are talking about it but not doing it maybe it won’t happen right away. Francis's "ambiguous style" (mentioned twice) actually helps, even if it drives some of the devout, like Douthat, crazy.

Douthat  seems to think that heresy is necessary for schism, and/or vice versa. But the Catechism distinguishes among heresy, apostasy and schism. Actually, apostasy seems to be the bigger problem these days.

The Decline and F....of the NYTimes

When dotCommonweal went dark, two after-lifes emerged. One here at New Gathering, organized by David Nickol, and the other an e-mail round-up organized by James McCrea   (have never been sure that this is or is not Jimmy Mac).

If you are on the McCrea list, you get a daily aggregation of Catholic, religion, and politic news from various sites with commentary from people on the list. Yesterday 9/13, McCrea posted a piece by Andrew Sullivan from New York Magazine. Here are Sullivan's opening lines:

"'Our democracy’s ideals were false when they were written.'

"I’ve been struggling with that sentence — the opening statement of the introductory essay to the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project on the legacy of slavery in America — for a few weeks now."

I too have been struggling with that sentence. So I am happy to say that Sullivan has said what I wish I might have said, if my daily annoyance at the NYTimes could have calmed and my brain become  more tranquil.

The NYTimes appears at our back door every morning (seven days a week) because the Steinfelses love the smell of ink along with their morning coffee (can't get that on-line).  It would be a joint decision to cancel and send the growing sum of money to a worthy cause, but the other half is not there yet. This is to say that increasingly the Times coverage of an array of subjects, art, culture, local news,  immigration, race, gender, both political parties, etc., is from a "woke" perspective. It has become predictable and too many cases 'not news'. 

Anyway....Sullivan does a good job of writing about the issues...I presume he too reads the paper of record every day, and he too is distressed at the direction the Times is going. I congratulate him on staying calm enough to write about the 1690 project...or at least its opening sentence.

Bolton and Trump

President Trump fired John Bolton.  Or Bolton quit.  (Rich Lowry at National Review: "I believe Bolton".)   Is this development good or bad?

Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune, trying to figure that out, scratches his head and notes, "... it’s hard to know if Bolton was fired for his bad ideas or his good ones."

The Ethical Contradictions of Brain Reading Technology

I recently came across this disturbing article on the Vox News site.

"Over the past few weeks, Facebook and Elon Musk’s Neuralink have announced that they’re building tech to read your mind — literally."

Declining Church Attendence in Philadelphia

Half of Catholics attending Mass 28 years ago no longer do

The above link is to Catholic Philly which is the archdiocese digital equivalent of a paper.  It is not really "new" news but in two very well done graphics it summarizes the statistics collected each October on Mass attendance. Like many other dioceses a count is made on all Sundays of October.

Each graphic links to current events in the diocese. The first gives the total number, the second the percentage change from the previous year.  Of course we must be weary of false correlations. The only uptick occurred in 2002. The diocese noted all the attention given to the previous jubilee year; of course they also acknowledge that 9/11 might have had something to do with it.

Besides the two clear graphics, they summarize the findings well:

“But the data suggest two significant factors: the clergy sexual abuse crisis and the closure of Catholic churches through parish mergers.

Regarding the former, even though the decline in attendance was well underway for years, the largest percentage declines from year to year occurred during significant episodes in the abuse crisis.”

They then describe: the scandal broke nationally in the spring of 2002 in Boston;  September 2005 the first Philadelphia grand jury report; in the winter of 2011 the second Philadelphia grand jury report; a grand jury report on abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese was released in 2016; the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report and McCarrick in 2018. The first graphic shows the steeper declines after these events.

“The other significant factor in declining Mass attendance suggests a downward spiral in which fewer available Masses lead to fewer people attending Mass regularly, and fewer people in church lead to fewer Masses celebrated. That means more parishes consolidating, resulting in fewer people attending, and so on.”

The declines started before 2002, and are clearly linked in 1993 to the 70 parish closings. One of the reasons for these graphs is that Chaput has to resign in a few months. Rocco who pointed out this article says that Chaput told his priests to expect up to 100 new closings under his successor.

We all see these and similar statistics from time to time piecemeal. We need more brief dramatic presentations like this to focus everyone’s attention on this deep problem and its likely causes.  It is notable that the presentation focuses upon two causes that are clearly the responsibility of the diocese. It does not spend time attributing them to the general culture or to the laxity of the laity.

Sometimes I can't help it

 Here is a story to distract you from thinking about what you are paying President Trump for the Pence entourage to stay at the Trump golf course in Doonberg, a town in Trump Ireland.

 Long story, short: Jimmy Aldaoud, who came to the United States as an infant in 1979, was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and put on an plane to Iraq. He had never been there; he was born in Greece. He didn’t know the language. He needed medicine he wouldn’t know how to get. As a deportee he couldn’t go to the U. S. Embassy for help. But being a culturally American, he would be targeted by the people who were his kinsmen only in the twisted minds of ICE. He had to be deported because he upsets the President of the United States and his base.

Yes, he’s dead.

Women on clericalism

... as reported by Cardinal Cupich in the archdiocesan newspaper.  Offered here without comment on my part, as no further mansplaining seems to be called for:

https://www.chicagocatholic.com/cardinal-blase-j.-cupich/-/article/2019/09/04/archdiocesan-women-s-committee-responds-to-the-issue-of-clericalism

Vietnamese Nuns Making a Difference for Minority Children

This interesting article on the NCR site caught my attention. It was a dose of inspiration in what has seemed like a week of disasters. Several groups of Vietnamese religious sisters are making a difference for minority ethnic children in Vietnam's Central Highlands.
From the article:

... Just like Bogey and Bacall

 People keep asking if Dorian is affecting us.
 Shortest answer: A little. Slightly longer answer: We are under a Hurricane Watch in Palm Beach County, meaning "hurricane conditions" could exist in the next 48 hours. Slightly longer answer: "Hurricane conditions" does not mean what's happening now on Bermuda; it could be a lot lighter, and is so forecast to be.
 I am writing now because the likelihoods tell me that we are going to lose power in the next 24 hours and could be out 3 to 10 days, most likely the shorter period. I have just sent this note to the kids, and I thought some of you might like it, too. I'll try to update, but when the  power goes off I will be silenced.  It should not be taken as an ominous silence.

New cardinals

http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2019/09/01/0650/01348.html

(Cardinal-designates under 80 years old:)

1. S.E. Mons. Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, mccj – Presidente del Pontificio Consiglio per il Dialogo Interreligioso.

2. S.E. Mons. José Tolentino Medonça – Archivista e Bibliotecario di Santa Romana Chiesa.

3. S.E. Mons. Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo – Arcivescovo de Jakarta.

4. S.E. Mons. Juan de la Caridad García Rodríguez – Arcivescovo de San Cristóbal de la Habana.

5. S.E. Mons. Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, o.f.m. cap – Arcivescovo di Kinshasa.

6. S.E. Mons. Jean-Claude Höllerich, sj – Arcivescovo di Lussemburgo.

7. S.E. Mons. Alvaro L. Ramazzini Imeri – Vescovo di Huehuetenamgo.

8. S.E. Mons. Matteo Zuppi – Arcivescovo di Bologna.

9. S.E. Mons. Cristóbal López Romero, sdb – Arcivescovo di Rabat.

10. R.P. Michael Czerny, sj – Sotto Segretario della Sezione Migranti – Dicastero per il Servizio dello Sviluppo Umano Integrale
(Cardinal-designates over 80 years old:)

1. S.E. Mons. Michael Louis Fitzgerald – Arcivescovo Emerito di Nepte

2. S.E. Mons. Sigitas Tamkevicius, sj – Arcivescovo Emerito di Kaunas

3. S.E. Mons. Eugenio Dal Corso, psdp – Vescovo Emerito di Benguela

Here are a few keywords about their careers from what I could hastily gather here and there on the internet. Please point out if some of these are incorrect.

Guixot: Dialogue with Islam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Ángel_Ayuso_Guixot

Tolentino Medonça: Christianity and Culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Tolentino_Mendonça

Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo: Evangelisation. President of the episcopal conference of Indonesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Suharyo_Hardjoatmodjo

Juan de la Caridad García Rodríguez: justice and peace. Past president of the episcopal conference of Cuba. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Garc%C3%ADa_Rodr%C3%ADguez

Fridolin Ambongo Besungu: Peace. Environment. Received death threats. Vice-president of the episcopal conference of Congo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridolin_Ambongo_Besungu

Jean-Claude Höllerich: Active in the WYD. President of the episcopal committee of the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Hollerich

Alvaro L. Ramazzini Imeri. Recipient of Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom award. Past president of the episcopal conference of Guatemala. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Álvaro_Leonel_Ramazzini_Imeri

Matteo Zuppi. Close to Sant'Egidio. Wrote a preface to Fr Martin's book "Building a bridge". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matteo_Zuppi

Cristóbal López Romero. Migrants. Dialogue with Islam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristóbal_López_Romero

Michael Czerny. Not a bishop. Social justice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Czerny

Michael Louis Fitzgerald. Christian-Muslim relations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_L._Fitzgerald

Sigitas Tamkevicius. Past president of the episcopal conference of Lituania. Founder of a clandestine newspaper in the time of Soviet occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigitas_Tamkevičius

Eugenio Dal Corso. Was bishop in Angola.https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenio_Dal_Corso