Like many people, I have views, and I make predictions. For the most part, I keep the predictions to myself. But I will venture a modest one today: Democrats will win control of the US House of Representatives on November 6.
Monday, October 8, 2018
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Vigano meets his match
Vigano has been challenging the Vatican, especially Francis, to respond to his original letter, full text here. Recently Vigano challenged the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, to back his story.
On Saturday, the Vatican said that "the Holy Father has decided that information gathered during the preliminary investigation be combined with a further thorough study of the entire documentation present in the Archives of the Dicasteries and Offices of the Holy See regarding the former Cardinal McCarrick, in order to ascertain all the relevant facts, to place them in their historical context and to evaluate them objectively."
However on Sunday, Cardinal March Ouellet issued his own testimony, full text here..
Friday, October 5, 2018
The morning read
A few things I've read this morning that may be of interest:
- At National Review, Jay Nordlinger's commentary on this year's Nobel Peace Prize winners, Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist who has worked to bring an end to rape as a weapon of war; and Nadia Murad, "a Yazidi woman, a former sex slave of ISIS, and now a human-rights activist". Nordlinger, borrowing a phrase from Churchill, judges Mukwege "a genius of humanity".
- David Brooks on the Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford hearing: "A Complete National Disgrace".
Over the past few years, hundreds of organizations and thousands of people (myself included) have mobilized to reduce political polarization, encourage civil dialogue and heal national divisions.The first test case for our movement was the Kavanaugh hearings. It’s clear that at least so far our work is a complete failure.
- Our own Margaret O'Brien Steinfels in Commonweal with a review of Karen Johnson's One in Christ. "In the fifty years following World War I and the murderous 1919 race riot, a small number of Chicago Catholics, black and white" worked for racial justice and equality, in the community and in the church. Fascinating stuff, not least because Peggy is able to situate herself in the latter years of that history.
Thursday, October 4, 2018
So that's what happened to it!
You are in interwar Germany. "Rejection of 'Americanism" became shorthand for all the ills of modernity that the German middle class felt they faced....[blah, blah, blah usual examples...]" Then this: "Their [young girls] bobbed 'American' hair style, said one cleric, was 'truly bereft of metaphysics.'" Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe: 1914-1945.
The greatest philosophy course I ever took was "Metaphysics" taught by John Bannon in 1962 at LU (Chicago). It seemed to my sophomore self that it helped to ground what was visible in the not visible. I was convinced that there was a "meta," an abstraction, a foundation, a form beyond or behind what was apparent. I basked in this idea.
But then I became a history major and didn't pursue the meaning or consequences of having a "meta." I know I have one. I also know that our culture is more or less bereft of metaphysics (among other things), but I never knew that bobbed hair may have been its death knell.
The greatest philosophy course I ever took was "Metaphysics" taught by John Bannon in 1962 at LU (Chicago). It seemed to my sophomore self that it helped to ground what was visible in the not visible. I was convinced that there was a "meta," an abstraction, a foundation, a form beyond or behind what was apparent. I basked in this idea.
But then I became a history major and didn't pursue the meaning or consequences of having a "meta." I know I have one. I also know that our culture is more or less bereft of metaphysics (among other things), but I never knew that bobbed hair may have been its death knell.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Lyrics - UPDATE
Update 10/4/2018 9:36 pm CT: As an illustration of why "business as usual" isn't really an option anymore, check out this Boston Globe story (h/t Rev. Anthony Ruff at the Pray Tell blog). Lots of statistics illustrating the intergenerational nature of the demographic contraction the church is facing.
I mentioned in a recent comment that I spent a couple of days earlier this week at a conference on the future of the archdiocese, the intention of which was to rally parish and diocesan leaders to do something about the dismal reality we're facing: decaying mass attendance, schools and parishes unable to stay above water, young people staying away, and so on. The "something" we're being asked to do is roll out a program across the archdiocese called Renew My Church, one leg of which is to get us to transform our parishes from being in maintenance mode (i.e. run for the benefit of its current members) to mission mode (i.e. becoming outward-facing, evangelizing people).
The prescription for combating the decline lies in large part not with Rome, but with local Catholic leaders inspiring young people individually, said Thompson, from the University of Dayton.
“It’s going to have to be the lay leaders — parents, teachers, local parish priests — they’re going to have to put forward models of Catholic authentic life,” he said. “If they don’t do that — if people don’t see there is any real possibility of transformation, that this whole religion stuff doesn’t actually make a difference in people’s lives — then all the policy prescriptions are not going to reach people where they live.”
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I mentioned in a recent comment that I spent a couple of days earlier this week at a conference on the future of the archdiocese, the intention of which was to rally parish and diocesan leaders to do something about the dismal reality we're facing: decaying mass attendance, schools and parishes unable to stay above water, young people staying away, and so on. The "something" we're being asked to do is roll out a program across the archdiocese called Renew My Church, one leg of which is to get us to transform our parishes from being in maintenance mode (i.e. run for the benefit of its current members) to mission mode (i.e. becoming outward-facing, evangelizing people).
Looking at what's behind the curtain
When the U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that the federal government could not remove the Cherokees from their lands in Georgia, President Andrew Jackson supposedly said, "John Marshall has made his ruling; now let him enforce it."
Most historians don't accept that quote as accurate, but its point is certainly true. The supremacy of the Supreme Court is one of several things about the court that is true only if everybody important agrees to pretend it is true.
The Cherokees were "removed" to Oklahoma, and there wasn't a thing the Chief Justice could do about it, alone nor with the other six (at the time) justices and all the clerks and bailiffs together. The President held the military power.
When Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the decision requiring school desegregation, President Dwight Eisenhower wasn't particularly happy to have the results dropped on his desk. He could have pulled a Jackson. What he did was enforce the order. He federalized the Arkansas National Guard to keep the mob from preventing the desegregation of Little Rock High School.
The Cherokee ruling was ignored. The school desegregation ruling would have been voided had Eisenhower decided to "let Earl Warren enforce it" or if the Arkansas National Guard troops had mutinied against the commander-in-chief.
Most historians don't accept that quote as accurate, but its point is certainly true. The supremacy of the Supreme Court is one of several things about the court that is true only if everybody important agrees to pretend it is true.
The Cherokees were "removed" to Oklahoma, and there wasn't a thing the Chief Justice could do about it, alone nor with the other six (at the time) justices and all the clerks and bailiffs together. The President held the military power.
When Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the decision requiring school desegregation, President Dwight Eisenhower wasn't particularly happy to have the results dropped on his desk. He could have pulled a Jackson. What he did was enforce the order. He federalized the Arkansas National Guard to keep the mob from preventing the desegregation of Little Rock High School.
The Cherokee ruling was ignored. The school desegregation ruling would have been voided had Eisenhower decided to "let Earl Warren enforce it" or if the Arkansas National Guard troops had mutinied against the commander-in-chief.
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Paradigm Shift
The phrase "paradigm shift" used to be a running joke between me and my husband. In the days when he was employed in the corporate world, there would often be motivational seminars or in-services that they were required to attend. Nearly always there would be a new way of doing things which was touted, which would supposedly change business life as they knew it. I would ask him afterwards, "Well, what kind of paradigm shift is going around this time?"
Jokes aside, it seems that we as a society are going through some major paradigm shifts. This article from Vox News, revisits the 1984 movie, Sixteen Candles, as an illustration of how our thinking has changed.
Jokes aside, it seems that we as a society are going through some major paradigm shifts. This article from Vox News, revisits the 1984 movie, Sixteen Candles, as an illustration of how our thinking has changed.
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