New season, new year

 I wrote this for this past Sunday's edition of our parish bulletin (which, these days, probably doesn't get read by nearly as many people as it used to).  Any thoughts / comments / corrections / amplifications most welcome.

Our Titanic and The Pandemic Iceberg

 

Dr. Amy Acton was the Director of Health for the State of Ohio when the pandemic hit. She convinced DeWine to declare a state of emergency the first day that a case was reported in Ohio, and to lock down the state quickly. Her prediction of ten thousand cases a day was sharply criticized when it did not occur because the "curve was flattened"  Now Ohio is at around ten thousand cases a day. 

 She became famous for her many metaphors, this article gives her newest, that of the pandemic is like the sinking of the Titanic, and we are now in lifeboats.

Months after leaving office, Dr. Amy Acton calls COVID-19 a humanitarian crisis

"So this is the Titanic at this point and you can't turn the Titanic on a dime," Acton said. "So, we're going down. It's some amount of going down, so let's minimize the amount."

"We're beyond there," Acton said of the initial predictions. "We don't have a curve to flatten right now. It's so bad … It's just like a line going up. I couldn't even say flatten it yet because it's that exponential."

"We're going to face a moment here, I think it's going to peak within the next two weeks," Acton said. "None of us is not going to know someone who's not affected. … We're going to see that we have a humanitarian crisis on our own soil."

"I really feel coming out of this Thanksgiving holiday, we're going to have more asked of us," she said. "So, we are on these lifeboats … our (lifeboats) are tethered to each other and each of us has to figure out how many people we can pull up."

A Most Unusual Thanksgiving Morning Prayer UPDATED

 The Anglicans have a lot of good music for Advent. This past week I discovered the music on Canterbury Cathedral's website.

One of the treasures that my friend Betty and I most enjoy is Morning Prayer with the Dean in the Deanery Garden. We especially enjoy Saturday when he is joined by all his animal friends. On other days it is mostly the vegetation and one of the house cats. 

DIRECT LINK TO MORNING PRAYER WITH THE ANIMALS

Morning Prayer – Saturday, 28th November 2020 | Canterbury Cathedral

Join Dean Robert – and friends 🐖🐖🐓🐓 - for today’s Morning Prayer from The Deanery Gardens at Canterbury Cathedral

On this anniversary of the birth of the visionary poet, artist and social reformer, William Blake, we give enormous thanks for his enormous breadth of creative talent that he shared with the world.  

Morning Prayer – Thursday, 26th November 2020 | Canterbury Cathedral

Join Dean Robert – and friends 🐖🐖🐓🐓 - for today’s Morning Prayer from The Deanery Gardens at Canterbury Cathedra.

Canterbury Cathedral Youtube Websitel

The website also has Choral Evening Song each day which you will find on the YouTube site.

Canterbury Cathedral Virtual Tour

The Virtual Tour is one of those in which 360 degree pictures were taken from various positions within and in this case atop the Cathedral.  You press on the various camera icons to get to the locations on the site map of the Cathedral. They are interactive so you can see all around  you and zoom in on various aspects. 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM OUR HOUSE; WE HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS AS MUCH AS WE DID THIS MORNING

See Brooklyn, and Die

  Earlier this year, the Supreme Court, in 5-4 decisions, told the churches and synagogues of California and Nevada that they have to follow pandemic-related closing orders of the state. Yesterday, the Supremes, in a 5-4 ruling, told the Diocese of Brooklyn and two synagogues associated with Agudath Israel of America that they can ignore pandemic closing orders in New York.
 There were  differences In practice but not in principle between California and New York. But the real difference was on the court. The late Ruth Bader Ginsberg was one of the five in the pro-life-preservation cases. Justice Amy Cony Barrett was the fifth vote in he pro-religious freedom to get people killed case.
 Obviously, you know how I would have voted.
 The court provided an injunction that prevents New York’s rules from applying while the case is given a full hearing in the lower court. But in providing he injunction, the five majority justices showed where they will stand, writing that the diocese and synagogues “have shown that their First Amendment claims are likely to prevail, that denying them relief would lead to irreparable injury, and that granting relief would not harm the public interest.”
 I, for one, don’t know how they showed the public interest wouldn’t be harmed if the public has any  interest in keeping Covid-19 from spreading. But this was just a per curiam ruling — no one claims authorship — for one phase of the Catholic and Jewish legal case against public safety flying under the rubric of religious liberty.
 Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote dissents. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh wrote concurring opinions. With all that writing, you would think they were deciding the case rather than simply deciding whether to put the law on ice until the case is heard.

 Justice Gorsuch’s stem-winding conclusion gives you a feel for the level of jurisprudence involved:
 “It is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques.”
 Yeah. You are in and out of a liquor store in minutes, but you are in church for an hour. There is no world, except the world of talk radio, in which the experiences are comparable.

COVID-19 vaccines and ethically problematic cell lines [Updated]

Update 11/25/2020, 10:17 am - I have expanded the moral analysis in the second half of the post and have tried to express my own views a bit more strongly and clearly.

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This is a complex subject.  I will do my best to unpack it, and also will share some initial views.  Disclaimer: I am neither a scientist nor a moral theologian.  

Confirmation saints

Our parish confirmed teens this month.  In our area, confirmation takes place in 10th grade.  Usually we have a bishop in to do the confirmations, doing the entire class in a single night.  This year, the pandemic dictated that it be subbed out to our pastor (pastors also confirm adult candidates on Easter Vigil), and he did them over a series of four services in order to provide proper social distancing.  I assisted at a couple of them, including the final one this past Saturday.

The tradition continues for the confirmandi (i.e. the kids getting confirmed) to pick a saint's name as a confirmation name.  On Saturday, it interested me that, of the 25 or so teens who were confirmed that day, at least four of the young men chose St. Sebastian and at least three young women chose St. Cecilia.  Afterward, I asked our pastor how it was that ancient martyrs had such followings.  He told me that St. Sebastian is considered a patron saint of athletes, and so popular with a lot of teen boys.  He wasn't completely sure about St. Cecilia.  She is the patron saint of musicians, so maybe some of these girls are musicians (although if they are, I don't think they were involved in the parish music ministry).  Or maybe there is something else about Cecilia's legends that appeal to young women? 

There also were at least two who chose Rose of Lima.  I am not certain why that happened, either - except that she is a patroness of the Philippines, and there are quite a few Filipino families in our areas.

I was confirmed in 4th grade.  I remember being afraid that, when the bishop slapped us, it would hurt.  Nobody gets slapped in our confirmations these days.  I chose St. Mark as my confirmation saint.  There was no good reason; I just liked the name.  We didn't have to research or write papers about it.  I think our teachers assumed we all were steeped in saints and angels, because they were when they were our age; but I went to Catholic school in the post-Vatican II area when a lot of that traditional spirituality was sort of being stripped out.  I am a product of the "banners and butterflies" area.  

Who is your confirmation saint, and why did you choose her/him?

In Favor of Mindless Entertainment

Since everyone needs a break sometimes from subjects which are fraught and painful, such as the pandemic and the election, this thread is about the things we do for entertainment, particularly television.

We have been watching a couple of series, one of which I consider a winner. The other is a bit more mixed.

What Have We Learned?

There is a good article by Sister Joan Chittister on the NCR site today.  In it she remembers how her mother used to say that there was something to be learned in everything, whether from a good or bad experience. "I'd pour out my losses or celebrate my gains and my mother — somewhere along the way — managed to make her ever-living point: "And what did you learn from that, Joan?"

From the article:   "That's where I am now. I've learned a lot from President Donald Trump in none of the ways I wanted to."

Other takes on the parable of the talents

 If the text for my homily for last Sunday and the nice conversation (with about the average amount of digressing :-)) which ensued has not yet quenched your thirst for reading texts which are meant to be spoken aloud, Fr. Edward Foley, Capuchin has posted the text of his homily for the same day at the Pray Tell blog.  Wonderfully written, and a significantly different take than mine.  He's great and brilliant, whereas, well, I guess you all know by now what I am.  He was, and perhaps still is, a professor at the Catholic Theological Union, the "other seminary"* in Chicago.  I've heard him speak.  Gentle, kind, and wears his considerable erudition lightly.

And for an extra bonus: here is a third take, in video form, also from Pray Tell: Fr. Ronald Raab, CSC provides a Sixty Second Sermon for the same Sunday.  It's as brief as the title suggests, but meaty.  His is a bit more along the lines as mine, and yet with a spin that I never would have come up with.    

* I think of it as the "other seminary".  My diaconate formation took place mostly at the University of St. Mary of the Lake, the seminary for priests of the Chicago Archdiocese (and many other dioceses as well).  It is located in Mundelein, IL, some 35 or so miles north and west of Chicago.   The Catholic Theological Union, or CTU, is a seminary on the South Side of Chicago.  It is for candidates for the priesthood for members of religious orders.  Both seminaries are more than seminaries: they also offer classes and degree programs for laypersons; and CTU also provides classes and degree programs for many women members of religious orders.

Preparing for what comes next

 This is my homily for today, the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A.  The readings for this week are here.

Some quick thoughts on the McCarrick Report [Updated]

Update 11/16/2020 10:01 CST - In the comments section below, Jack refers us to a piece by David Gibson on the Commonweal website.  Gibson has his own original take, informed not only by the contents of the report but also from his background as a journalist.  Gibson has known and covered McCarrick for decades, and is well acquainted with the machinations between the Holy See and the American church.   He sees McCarrick as less important a churchman than many others rate him, but also sees him as a dysfunctional actor who learned to operate in a dysfunctional senior clerical culture.  Definitely worth a read.

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On Tuesday, the Vatican released the report of a two-year investigation into the history of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.  We have discussed the disgraced and now defrocked McCarrick's case a number of times in the last couple of years: to see a listing of those previous posts sorted by date posted, click here.

What follows are my own reactions to and thoughts about this week's development.

Too Little Democracy

There is an interesting article on the Vox site, by Ezra Klein, which makes the case that too much polarization isn't the problem, it's too little democracy.

"If Republicans couldn’t win so much power while losing votes, the US wouldn’t be in the current crisis."

Happy Veteran's Day

 

I don't know how many of you have veterans in your family, but happy Veterans' Day, as well as the feast day of St. Martin of Tours.  Appropriate since he is a patron of soldiers. We all know the story of him splitting his cloak with the beggar. He was one of the more popular saints in medieval times.

Martin of Tours is the patron saint of one of my brothers.  I remember helping him make a cardboard shield, covered with aluminum foil, for the school Halloween/All Saints party. He was actually named for our Danish Lutheran grandfather, a veteran of World War I.  Who was likely named for Martin Luther. Who in turn was probably named for Martin of Tours. 

Have You Ever Seen a Putsch Walking?

 

+ Seventy percent of the red-hatted Descamisados think the election was stolen from el Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago.

+ The Caudillo fires his secretary of defense, who defied him on something, and appoints a new one with less personal clout.

+The secretary of state says the Caudillo will have a second term and takes off at taxpayer expense to tell other countries what they can do with their doubts.

+ The justice minister, breaking longtime written policy, announces his bloodhounds will prosecute any voter fraud they can find. (His top assistant for such investigations quits in protest -- not the first assistant to do so.)

+ The officer in charge of releasing transition funds refuses to release them to the person with the most Electoral College votes.

+ All of this is because El Caudillo – as he repeatedly shouted – could not lose the election unless he was cheated by the liars in # many states’ offices, # uncountable numbers of local election offices, # liberalleftwingsocialistdemocrat party members and , of course # lyin’ media , who all ganged up against him.

+ And the head of the upper house of the Legislature, a crony of El Caudillo, says keep calm because it will all work out.

Warp Speed - up to a point

The nation and the world received a much-needed jolt of good news yesterday.  Here are Carl Zimmer and Katie Thomas in the New York Times:

As coronavirus cases surge in the United States and elsewhere, with little relief in sight, the world got good news on Monday. Pfizer and its partner, the German company, BioNTech, announced preliminary results that suggested their vaccine was more than 90 percent effective.

The public and the stock market rejoiced, at least for a day.  But the new vaccine still hasn't crossed the finish line - and it's far from clear that the logistics exist to get it into the hands of the public.

What is the church? [Updated]

Photo courtesy of Pinterest, via Google

Update Nov 10, 2020 8:26 am CST: When I drafted this post, it didn't occur to me that the Holy See was on the verge of releasing the report of its investigation into former Cardinal McCarrick, including Vatican complicity in his advancement.  That report now has been released.  National Catholic Reporter's initial take by Joshua McElwee sees the report as citing institutional failure at multiple levels.  John Paul II seems to bear much of the blame for McCarrick escaping responsibility for so many years, but Benedict and even Francis don't come away entirely unscathed.  Some New Jersey bishops (not named in the report) also are implicated, and Archbishop Vigano's nose is bloodied, too.  McElwee's article leaves me with the impression that a few punches are pulled, but the report isn't a whitewash.  

In light of this post's topic, it is hard to describe the church's enablement of this serial abuser's career as anything but a failure of the Institutional Model.  If our only model of the church is the Institutional Model, then surely our faith in the church must be shaken by such a failure.  As indeed, for many of us, it is shaken!  Here we see what a gift Dulles' book is: his alternative models help us understand that the church is much more than its institutional presence.  This realization of what the church actually is, may serve to strengthen our faith in Christianity's corporal presence.

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By the time I hit the Publish button, it will be Tuesday in the Eastern Time Zone, but as I write this here in Illinois, it is still Monday.  Today, Monday November 9, is a feast day for the church.  And when I say "for the church", I don't just mean that the feast is on the church's calendar; I mean that today's feast really is *for the church*.  It's the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, also known as St. John Lateran.  The basilica, technically an archbasilica - the only one in the world - is, quite literally, the seat of the Roman Pontiff: the basilica houses the pope's cathedra, or episcopal chair, symbolizing his role as shepherd for the diocese of Rome.  

Because all of us who post and comment here are members of the church in some respect or other, that means that we're included in this feast, too.  So November 9 each year is our feast.

The Second Coming

Our priest homilized on the Second Coming this weekend.  Of course it was the gospel of the wise and foolish virgins. The "end times" come up in the readings this time of year, but they aren't often a subject of Catholic homilies. But as he pointed out, Jesus said pretty plainly that he would be coming back, the same way he left. 

What Should Biden Say and Do Tonight?

 I think he needs to create something like a Pandemic Council that can start leading right now.  

Gather outstanding scientific experts, and leaders in the medical community.  But also business and civic leaders. And of course governors and mayors who have to integrate this at their level too with their local health, education, business, and civic leaders.

We really can not waste any time getting this together.

Time to pop a patience pill

In 2018 we learned the lesson, or should have, that election night results aren't much more reliable than pre-election polling: they're projections based on incomplete data.  In the new election reality of massive numbers of mail-in ballots, many of which don't even arrive, much less get tabulated, until several days after Election Day (which should be renamed Last Voting and Postmark Day), final results may take more than a week to compile - and the final results can look considerably different than they looked on the evening of Election Day.

So don't believe everything you've read and heard about the election results.  Both Republican and Democratic elected officials, aides and strategists have been saying for the last two days that Republicans over-performed: Trump did much better than expected; Republicans have held onto the Senate majority; Republicans made unexpected gains in the House.  Don't believe any of it.  Or at least, don't take any of it to the bank.  There are still many votes to count - and usually those mail-in votes tilt heavily toward Democrats.  At least one Georgia Senate race, and very possibly both of them, are going to go into run-off elections to determine whether two Republicans, two Democrats, or one of each will be representing that state. If it turns out that both of them are Democrats, then in fact the Senate will have been flipped, with Vice President Harris acting as the decisive vote in case of tie votes*.  (Conservative West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin's thoughts and deeds will become matters of great national interest if that scenario comes to pass; he becomes the new Susan Collins.)  I concede that it's unlikely that Democrats will pick up both Georgia Senate seats.  But it's not impossible - seemingly no more impossible than Trump winning Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada to retain the presidency.  As of earlier this morning, I believe that Republican Senator Thom Tillis' re-election in North Carolina wasn't settled yet, either.        

So let's wait and see.  None of this is decided yet, and none of it needs to be decided yet.  We have time.  Let's use it to get this right.

* Note that I am not following my own advice here: I am assuming that Biden and Harris have won, which also is not yet a sure thing. I am supposing that the remaining states in play will fall as projected, and that Trump's litigation is meritless.

Election judge report

 As I mentioned, I worked as an election judge yesterday.  I learned a lot, got to interact with quite a few fellow citizens, and drew some conclusions about voting in our republican democracy. What follows are a few miscellaneous observations from yesterday's experience.  

Living Together Post-Election

 As I type this, election results are still unclear.  Polls indicated that this would not be such a tight race, but in the end we don't know until we know.  For the sake of our mental health, we have to work out a way forward for ourselves as individuals, as well as existing as Americans, no matter what the result is.

Thanks to Anne for pointing out this article  from the Global Sisters' Report. It is worth reading in it's entirety, but here are some thoughts from it:

Interim Final Thoughts

 When is over?
 When the Pennsylvania results come int? That won’t be until Friday.
 When the last lawsuit is settled? In 2000, that wasn’t until Dec. 14.
 When the president is sworn in, Jan. 20?
 When congressional gridlock ends?  When will that be?
 The truth is, even when it is over, it won’t be over.
 “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

 Twice in U.S. History the will of the voters was reversed after they had voted. Once the deed was done in the Electoral College, once by the Supreme Court. Three of the lawyers who helped to bring about the latter reversal now sit on the Supreme Court. In both cases, the Republican loser was declared the winner. Yet it is the Republican Party that keeps saying it worries about voter fraud. What’s that all about?
 Guilty consciences?

 

All Soul's Day remembrances

Doing Morning Prayer this morning got me reflecting a bit about people I've lost, especially over the past year.  There was a mom, elderly, and her daughter, maybe my age or a bit younger, who were at mass every week, always in the front pew.  Both were on walkers.  They lived together, and were each other's caretaker - a fairly common arrangement among the elderly and infirm around here.  The mom had this thing about postcards - she would mail me a greeting on a postcard for every holiday, even St. Patrick's Day and Veteran's Day.  Kind of different, but sweet.  They stopped coming to mass about a year ago, because the mom could no longer walk, needed a wheelchair, and the daughter, because of her own disability,  couldn't manage the chair.  The mom died sometime within the last year - before the pandemic was really a thing in the US.  Now we've just learned that the daughter has passed away, too.  As we're all separated from one another now, I'm not sure what those circumstances were.  But Mary and Theresa, praying for you today.

Tom was the parish's head maintenance man for years.  It was a second career for him; he took the job after retiring from being a maintenance engineer at a high-rise building in downtown Chicago.  After he retired from the parish, he got involved in our Community Table ministry - it's kind of like a soup kitchen, except instead of serving soup, we serve fried chicken twice a month.  We put out a big buffet - parishioners prepare all sorts of homemade side dishes - and the hungry people come through the line as often as they want.  The chicken always is the last item in the buffet, and Tom was the Chicken Man - no matter who was serving elsewhere on the buffet, everyone understood that serving the chicken was his job.  We asked him if he'd like to get involved in planning the events, but no - he just wanted to serve the chicken.  And he was great with the guests.  We had to shut down the in-person buffet service because of COVID - couldn't have crowds of people in our building.  it became a drive-through service this year, in which we packed up simple meals in styrofoam to-go containers and handed them through the drivers-side window to hungry people who pulled up in the parking lot.  We needed many fewer volunteers for the to-go service, so hadn't seen Tom this year.  He passed away this summer - had a stroke at mass, then held on for the better part of a month before letting go.  According to his widow, it was all very hard on him, and also on her.  Tom, praying for you today, too.

Anyone you're remembering today?