Dec. 12: My favorite Marian feast -- and hers? - Update

 In the real, unadulterated depiction of the Blessed Mother on the Guadalupe tilma, she is about eight-and-a-half months pregnant. That’s right, since her liturgical due date was about two weeks after her image appeared on St. Juan Diego’s cloak in 1531.

 You don’t see many images of Mary in which she is pregnant. She was, you know. It’s in Luke. But when she appears in approved statues and paintings, her appearance more often implies the virginal and leaves out maternity. Additionally, when I see them I think of the greeting that drives my Jewish friends up a wall: “But you don’t look Jewish.” Well, she wouldn’t if the model was a Renaissance painter’s mistress, which so many of the models were, would she?

 In many unauthorized copies of the Guadalupe tilma, she gets Nordic coloring. They also lift her head as if the humble tilt she showed to Juan Diego ill-befits a queen of heaven, who should look like Wonder Woman when she is eclipsing – as she is on the tilma – the sun god.

  But that is not how she presented herself.

 What is on Juan Diego’s cloak is not a painting. The tilma is made from fiber that lasts no more than 20 years when artists try to copy the image on the identical kind of material and make what one enthusiastic Milwaukeean called a “genuine replica.” The tilma is going on 500 years. Lots of other things about it aren’t explained either.

  I have never seen a picture of Mary up to her elbows in dough with a rolling pin in her hands. The title would be Mary, Maker of Bread, and that’s symbolism that just wouldn’t quit. It would probably give the vapors to the keepers of that distinctly Catholic idea that Mary was a virgin mother without ever being pregnant or breaking a sweat. (I also don’t believe that a Jewish mother undergoing what she went through was meek and mild as a dove.)

  I don’t think the standard, authorized Catholic image of Mary is very biblical or true to life. More importantly, we have the evidence of the tilma that neither does its subject. 

 Update: I had an October date on top. Maybe confusingnmy birthday month with the one we are in. Or maybe just another senior moment. Anyway Deacon Jim gets credit for me getting the headline right.
Second update: A nice piece on interpreting Our Lady of Guadalupe,by Timothy Matovina,  popped up on the Commonweal Website: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/edges-empire

I'm not lovin' it

(NB - I have been mostly absent from NewGathering for a few weeks now.  There is no better or worse reason for this than that the rest of my life - especially work - has been crowding out such pleasurable activities as reading, thinking and writing.  In fact, as I write this, I'm also sitting on a conference call for work, at 11:30 pm on a Saturday night, which - thankfully - isn't requiring much of my active participation.  I do have a few more blog posts rattling around inside me, and I'll endeavor to cough 'em up as time permits.)

McDonalds has joined the march of retailers replacing humans with computers and robots.

Nebraskans Skeptical of Bridging Partisan Divides

Thanks to Anne for pointing out this article  yesterday.  It isn't too often that our state makes the pages of NCR. But I felt that it was mostly accurate.
From the article:

More Ukraine Fall-Out

Among the sorry outcomes of Trump's September phone call to Ukraine president Zelensky is the latters meeting with Russian Diktator Vladimir Putin in Paris on Monday at what are reputed to be peace talks.

Trump's phone call and Giuliani's (et al) machinations drumming up misinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine interference in the 2016 election (fake news) leaves Zelensky in a weakened position. He will be trying to end the conflict in the Russian-occupied Donbas region of Ukraine. He would be in a far better position if the U.S. was four square behind Ukraine in its efforts to reclaim its territory and to remove Russian meddling (to say nothing of its seizure of Crimea).  Trump and his free-lancing gangsters have steadily undermined Ukraine's claims to independence from Russian interference.

Here is a relatively short Brookings run down on how and why the U.S. became a guarantor of Ukraine independence. They gave up the nuclear weapons place there by the Soviets (remember 1990!).  

And here is a CFR assessment of the prospects for the Paris talks.

Margaret Steinfels' reflections on Havel and the Velvet Revolution

Margaret Steinfels has an interesting article in the current Commonweal - reflections on what has happened in Czechia since the Velvet Revolution.

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/rereading-havel


Rereading Havel now, I hear the echo of a beleaguered people. It may be a stretch, but I can’t help wondering whether we are the ones now caught up in “living a lie”? I

Rep. Heck Departs Washington

“The countless hours I have spent in the investigation of Russian election interference and the impeachment inquiry have rendered my soul weary,” wrote Mr. Heck, who was first elected to Congress in 2012. “I will never understand how some of my colleagues, in many ways good people, could ignore or deny the President’s unrelenting attack on a free press, his vicious character assassination of anyone who disagreed with him, and his demonstrably very distant relationship with the truth.”

"Mr. Heck appeared to become emotional while speaking to Marie Yovanovitch, the former United States ambassador to Ukraine, who was recalled from her post in May....I am very angry about how it is the most powerful person on the face of the earth would remove you from office after your stellar service and somehow feel compelled to characterize you as ‘bad news,’ and then to ominously threaten that you’re ‘going to go through some things....So, I am angry. But I’m not surprised.”

"Soul weary" is how Mr. Heck describes his state, and describes many other Americans.
Can the rest of us "soul weary" Americans take heart from Trump's colleagues in London mocking him and laughing at him?  Or should we cringe? The Emperor has no clothes, no self-respect....no soul.
@New York Times, 12/5. 

Meanwhile....The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, appears to be "soul ebullient." 

“Don't mess with me,” Pelosi said.
Rosen had shouted the question to Pelosi about whether she hates Trump after she had ended her press conference and was walking away from the podium. The speaker stopped and answered, clearly offended.
“I don’t hate anybody,” she said. “I was raised in a Catholic house. We don’t hate anybody, not anybody in the world.
“Don't accuse me of hate,” she added.
Rosen said he did not accuse her, he asked a question.
“You did. You did,” Pelosi shot back....
@Roll Call, 12/5.

The Deep State

I often don't agree with Jonah Goldberg, but I thought his recent column  on the "deep state" was right on. It's a term that Trump and his minions and excuse makers have bandied about. But they have not indicated that they know, or else they choose to ignore, its origins, or what it really means.
From the Goldberg column: