FROM MY COMMONWEAL E-MAIL
DID ANY OF YOU RECEIVE THESE?
Introducing The First Word: Heidi Schlumpf’s weekly guide to Catholic news and commentary
Dear Commonweal reader,
This is an exciting moment in the Church—and that means it’s a busy time for us at Commonweal. Interest in Roman Catholicism is on the rise, especially among young people. Catholic social teaching is having a moment, with many looking to Rome for guidance on the AI threat. A U.S.-born pope is changing U.S. Catholicism and the American bishops seem increasingly willing to stand up to MAGA nativism.
To make sense of these trends and developments, it’s wise to consult an experienced guide. That’s why we’re launching The First Word, a weekly newsletter from Commonweal senior correspondent Heidi Schlumpf.
When the news becomes disorienting, Heidi Schlumpf helps put things back into perspective. With more than three decades of reporting experience and commenting on the issues of the day, Heidi knows how to separate the news from the noise, helping you interpret this unique moment in our Church, politics, culture, and beyond.
In each edition of The First Word, Heidi will give you a behind-the-scenes look at her reporting process and tell you what she’ll be following in the days ahead. She’ll also share some of the things that keep her hopeful when hope can seem hard to find.
FIRST WORD
Monday October 5
If I had a million dollars, I would spend at least some of it polling Catholic voters, an electoral segment many believe will be key in the upcoming midterms.
Catholics have “Trump fatigue” and are “swingable,” Stephen Schneck, president of the Catholics for the Future PAC, recently told me for my essay, “Can Catholic Voters Tip the Midterms?” Trump’s favorability numbers among Catholics have tanked, although a bare majority of white Catholics still approve of his job in office—at least according to polling done in January. But there isn’t good data that segments Catholic voters a month out from another “most important election of our lifetime.”
Polls are starting to predict an even larger “blue wave” than originally anticipated; some commentators are even using the word “tsumani.” Whether white Catholics bail on Trump’s GOP remains to be seen, but the numbers from Latino voters are pretty clear: Trump’s gains from 2024 have evaporated. Hispanic voters are telling pollsters they will vote for Democrats over Republicans by a 35-percentage point margin, according to an August average of high-quality national polls.
In my piece, I argue that since Catholics helped get us into this mess, they should now step up in putting at least some limits on Trump’s power. You can read it here.
Rather than summarizing the article, I actually quoted the important parts of the article to give you a sense of her writing style if you are not familiar with her.
What I thought was important about the article was all the links she gave to Catholic organizations that are politically relevant to the Democratic side of this election.
In the original article she just gives links. I went to the websites and gave some of the interesting things that you would find there. Much of this would be relevant to Catholic Democrats around the country who might want to organize for this election. Of course it has already begun here in Ohio. Might have be more useful back in July, August and September. Actually the Democrats here at the local precinct level did not get organized until mid September.
So Commonweal seems to be giving Catholics something that they could use politically to organize, although it does not directly say that.
Anyway, you do not get that in the newsletter. It is only an advertisement for the weekly articles that will be on the Commonweal Website. Of course, you could read three of them for free if you are not a subscriber (or go to my website for the weekly summary with extra goodies).
There is a link on the post to subscribe to the newsletter. I started to sign up then had second thoughts. The subscription is to a third party, not Commonweal that handles marketing for this. Don't know what that is about? If any of you try it out, I will be interested in how that shapes your inbox other than the weekly article.
PLEASE COMMENT ON BOTH THE BLUE WAVE ARTICLE AND THIS NEW FEATURE OF COMMONWEAL.
Unfortunate title; First Word sounds too much like First Things.
ReplyDeleteBy now I should think that Catholics understand the pitfalls of separating themselves politically. A lot of folks are tired of the "you gotta vote this way to be an authentic Catholic" shtick.
So rather than take a partisan political tack, if that's what Schlumpf has in mind, I'd rather see Catholics get back to the moral precepts and social teaching they supposedly all subscribe to.
Catholic social teaching, at least in my locale, has been ignored in favor of fussy-fussy rules about altar girls, women's head covering, pre-Communion fasting, requirements for Confession, banning of Protestant hymns, etc.
I thought it was meant to be a counterpart to the Last Word, the final on page each issue. Never even thought of First Things. I guess I don't think of Commonweal as being in competition with First Things, although First Things probably thinks it is in competition with Commonweal.
DeleteI subscribed to see what it was all about, but I have not rec'd her Blue Wave article yet.
DeleteI think First Things has always Bern a foil to C'weal-flavored Catholicism. And, again, I think there are lots of dangers in linking religion and partisan politics generally.
Bern = been. Damn beta blocker is doing weird stuff to my head. Will be glad when docs are done fine-tuning post-op meds.
DeleteBetty has umpteen medications for umpteen different conditions. So her life consists of trying to make sense of what is due to the medications and conditions.
DeleteAnytime she gets a new medication from a doctor she has to try to figure out what is likely to happen if she takes it. Most of her physicians are not familiar with most of her conditions and sometimes don't understand all the medications she is taking even though they have a list of them.
Betty is fortunate to have spent 30 years as a medical technician and the rest of her life figuring out her health as well as that of her son and daughter both of whom share the EDS genetic profile (which very few doctors understand).
Fortunately, she now has a primary physician that has studied up on EDS so well that other physicians are now referring EDS patients. More importantly she is now taking a hand in vetting new prescriptions by other physicians by talking directly with those physicians about Betty. Perhaps being Black, and a woman has motivated her to those extraordinary efforts in a very busy schedule. Of course, Betty is also an extraordinary patient. Unfortunately, many of her doctors would prefer that she not ask so many difficult questions
Yes, balancing chronic blood cancer treatment and open-heart surgical care has been interesting. Generally, the nurses cottoned on to these things much quicker than the docs, and they were not shy about advocating for me. Glad Betty is advocating for other patients. Doctors too often chalk things up to "female trouble." Generally if I have something a doctor can't see, feel, hear, or measure on a test, I don't see any point in going in. All you get is pegged as a nutcase.
DeleteI am a subscriber. It's one of the few things I can do to support intellectually and theologically based, progressive Catholic journalism. Unfortunately Barron and Jeff Clavins and other conservatives have taken over most parish adult education from what I read. I know that the two parishes I once belonged to are now using only conservative materials and programs.
ReplyDeleteLong, long ago, in our first parish, we had a big publication rack. It contained more than a dozen Catholic publications that covered the range of conservative, middle of the road, and progressive. It disappeared when the Baptist-turned-Catholic-very conservative pastor arrived. Everything from Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic Digest to National Catholic Reporter. Commonweal, America, US Catholic, etc. It was a really great resource for parishoners. They also had (still have) a large parish library of books for lending out. At some point they purged it of unacceptable writers. You won't find Kung or Rohr there. But you will find Scott Hahn. One thing I've always liked about Catholicism is the depth and breadth of intellectual thinking. But censorship of progressives seems to have taken hold in many places.
I think of First Things as being about theology as it interprets culture and politics. By theology I meant systematic theology whose background is Augustine, Acquinas, etc. It does not include scripture studies, liturgical studies, spirituality studies; all the detailed historical past of Catholicism which interests me rather than the boring, abstract stuff of systematic theology. I see a rich, diverse Catholicism of many different spiritualities which First Things tries to ignore. They have the answers from classical systematic theology.
ReplyDeleteI think of Commonweal as being about spirituality, i.e. Christian, especially Catholic spirituality. Spirituality in the broader sense of the medieval transcendentals, especially the True, the Good, the Beautiful, the "common weal" of Western Civilization, especially Catholicism, as applied to contemporary religion, culture and politics.
Spirituality is about Christian and Catholic life as it is actually lived in its complexity and diversity. Systematic theology aims at understanding God, Christ, the cosmos, history, humanity, and culture in the light of "first things" i.e. theoretical principles.
Very different approaches that share some common ancestry in Western Civilization. Systematic theology is a very clerical approach to that ancestry; spirituality is more a lay approach to that ancestry.
While I think clerics should study systematic theology; I think they should study scripture, liturgy and spirituality even more if they want to be pastorally relevant.
I think laity should begin with the history of spirituality, especially that of religious orders to understand how very differently Catholicism has been interpreted across the centuries. Similarly, laity should understand how liturgy has varied across centuries and in different rites. And laity should understand how the Bible can be studied in various different ways. Laity need to know about all the diverse possibilities of Catholic life as actually lived, what clergy need to have a framework which allows they to understand all those different possibilities. However, they should not impose that framework on the laity.
When it comes to systematic theology laity need to understand that by and large all systematic theology is confessional, and therefore very clerical. Laity need to understand the central problem of Catholicism is clericalism. Clergy have a very difficult time being servants, especially servants of ALL.
Most of that is way too deep for me, Jack.
DeleteI see First Things as an attempt by hierarchs and their allies to promote obedience via corrective commentary.
I see Commonweal, at least when I was writing for them, as a group of elderly liberal cradle Catholics, largely in academia, commenting on how their faith intersects with current politics and culture.
I don't think the two are actively in competition, but certainly their aims and views on the Church are quite different.
Jack, I agree with you completely. So much Catholic education centered on “ thou shalt nots” and cherry picked passages from scripture. About 20 years ago I took a graduate course on Christian Spirituality from the beginning to the 12th century. It was fascinating. It was taught by Ilio Delio, but I had no idea who she was when I took the course. Just lucked out in getting a truly brilliant professor.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilia_Delio
The Catholic tradition in the formation of priests has been to whisk the candidates away from the laity and its multiple spiritualities, and enclose them in isolated seminaries for a half-decade or so. I am sure a motivating factor is to wall off the candidates, who tend to be of the typical age to marry, from the temptations of young women. (Although not the temptations of other young men; that phenomenon seems to have been handled dysfunctionally, breeding a further-complicating set of problems.)
DeleteSeminaries serve as centers of higher learning, which is obviously good; but the quasi-monastic way of life doesn’t strike me as a good way to prep diocesan priests for living pastorally among a vast ocean of laity.
Once the priest is ordained, the communal rectory life can be sort of monastic in its own way, but in the last 20 or 30 years, the communal aspect has largely disappeared, because of the priest shortage. My observation is that today's generations of priests have become accustomed to living alone, and many pf them don't welcome the prospect of sharing living quarters with one or more other priests.
First Things grew out of theological engagement between Catholics and Evangelicals. Originally, it was sort of a fruit of ecumenism. Evangelical converts to Catholicism always have exercised influence over the publication. It also evolved as a sort of reaction to what its founders saw as the progressive excesses - theologically, politically, culturally - of the 1960s. It is, in that sense, essentially reactive / reactionary.
ReplyDeleteOne of the strengths of Commonweal is that, from what I can tell, it doesn't have a single influential founder whom it feels compelled to continue to generate. By contrast, First Things is burdened with the legacy of Neuhaus and what to do with it as time marches on. Same with National Review and Buckley.
My dad used to give me a First Things subscription for Christmas. I did sort of find some interesting articles in it in the early days. Then I found it tedious and tiresome when they got more reactionary, but I didn't want to hurt Dad's feelings by saying so. Finally one year he said, "Do you really like it any more? I've kind of gotten tired of it." I then said, "no, you definitely don't have to keep getting it for me!"
Delete"generate" s/b "venerate". Not sure if I made that typo, or if autocorrect did it on my behalf.
ReplyDeleteJim, autocorrect regularly changes what I type.
ReplyDeleteI like Commonweal for its writers like Eugene McCarraher with their strong socialist perspective. America, in contrast, has become so frumpy and both-sidesist, a process which began with the loss of Father .Reese. It also completely ignores the genocide by Israel which makes it, in my opinion, a zionist rag. I used to read First Things until I got tired of Neuhaus’ nasty dyspepsia more than anything else. I could take intellectually-based conservative articles but not ad hominem attacks. What did it for me is when he fat shamed two lesbian JRC volunteers who got married. He also praised the commercialization of Christmas. What a Mammonite. Were Neuhaus still alive, I suspect he would be an enthusiastic apologist for Trump.
ReplyDeleteStanley, you might be interested in this recent article in Commonwealth.
Deletehttps://tinyurl.com/yhk6pck9
CommonWEAL. Autocorrect did it again, Jim.
DeleteI had let my Commonweal subscription lapse, it is kind of expensive, and I didn't read all the articles. But lately they ran a $19.95 special, so re-subscribed.
DeleteI seldom read many articles in the publications I subscribe to. Generally only 2-5, depending. The most expensive is The Economist. But each publication has a different slant so I read several. We used to spend a whole lot of money traveling. Those days are mostly gone. We don’t go out to dinner often, or movies ever. Once or twice a year we go to a concert at the Washington National Cathedral. So our entertainment expenses are an annual donation to PBS, a few lunches or dinners at a restaurant with friends (usually lunch, about 6 times/year), and a Netflix subscription that we seldom use so may cancel. Plus the NYT, America, Commonweal, The Atlantic and The Economist are now considered as entertainment spending. I have a DC public library card and now read the WaPo digital version via the library. One less subscriber for Bezos head count to attract advertisers. The WaPo pops up every month or so with a $20/year intro subscription. They are desperate for subscribers. Meanwhile the number of NYT subscribers just keeps increasing.
DeleteThanks,Anne. I read that article. Sometimes I think he didn’t like all the gay lib stuff and that made him switch sides. Makes me wonder if he was closeted.
DeleteUnrelated, I had the first of two cataract surgeries yesterday. It really wasn't too bad, the worst part was them poking around to find a cooperative vein for the IV. They didn't put me clear under, just enough to be in la la land for awhile. Some people have both eyes done at once, but I'm glad I didn't. I really couldn't see very well out of the eye the rest of the day, it would be a problem to have both eyes like that. Today is better. I have to go back for a re-check later this morning.
ReplyDeleteI am super impressed by the kindness and competence of the nurses and anesthetist. The young ophthalmologist surgeon had *no* bedside manner at all, but I could care less as long as he is competent, which he appears to have been.
Compared with what the pope is going through, this is minor inconvenience!
Please bear with me if there are a bunch of typos, vision is still not a hundred percent.
Good luck with the other eye and healing. They say that things look more vivid once you have the cataracts off.
DeleteAnesthetist: Just before surgery, I told mine I wanted him to promise me I would feel nothing and remember nothing. Totally deadpan, he said, "No worries, I watched some videos over on YouTube this morning." I went out laughing, anyway!
Thanks Jean. Good one by your anesthetist about the YouTube videos!
DeleteKatherine, good idea to wait to do the second eye. The Stanford cataract surgeon I had in California pretty much insisted on that. During those two weeks before the second eye I realized that I wasn’t seeing colors correctly in recent years. California has a lot of very vivid, very bright colored flowers, including in our son’s yard. I would close one eye and then the other to just look at the colors. I hadn’t realized how much the cataracts had washed them out. But I did find the drops routine for a month to be a bit of a pain. I would set timers on my phone to remind me. Happy healing!
DeleteGoogle Gemini and Youtube videos are my two sources of knowledge and wisdom these days - I couldn't run my life without them!
DeleteGood things I am discovering: I now have 20/20 vision for distance. Things no longer look like a Gustav Courbet landscape, a little bit blurry and fuzzy, a little muted for color. I can see leaves on trees a quarter mile away, and found out that we have a bush in our yard with beautiful red berries. Not so good things, I am finding that I need reading glasses to read anything (unless it's on my tablet and I can enlarge the print.) My husband had his cataracts done three years ago. So I asked him if the need for reading glasses is a forever thing. Um, yeah.
DeleteI also can see every speck of dirt, every mote of dust on the floor. I always knew I was not a great housekeeper, but the evidence is there to be noticed.
Really good things, I can read street signs again at a distance. Vision is sharp and clear for driving. That alone makes it worth it. And the eye they did Wednesday wasn't even the worst one, so more changes to look forward to.
My dad balked at cataract surgery saying that "your other senses make up for it." I guess he figured he would stick his head out the car window and smell his way home like a dog. Finally got it done when we told him we wouldn't ride with him any more.
DeleteIIRC, took a while for his vision to stabilize. He was always 20/20 on distance, but did need a correction in his readers.
Katherine, my vision from my first glasses at age 6 was 20/400. That’s as high as they measure with the standard eye chart. I was naive because when my husband (with 20/20 vision) had cataract surgery he had perfect vision after it also. I thought I would too. Nope— the doctor warned me that they probably couldn’t correct it to better than 20/40 or 20/50. Because, he said, “ Your eyes are so far out of the range of normal that it isn’t possible to get 20/20 with the replacement lens”. I have 20/30 in one eye now and 20/40 in the other. I hate not being able to see up close anymore though as I could when I took out the contacts at night. So now I wear one contact lens for reading. I had monovision lenses before my surgery- one distance lens and one reading lens.
Delete