. . . to a pulpit or classroom near you. From what a Princeton U. conservative scholar calls “the capital of the world.” As new top U.S. bishop for next three years, he is bound to be heard and seen.
“. . . [T]he bishops have decided to opt for a confident Catholicism,” [the scholar, Robert] George said. “They had a choice, and they chose the boldest, most outspoken bishop. You wouldn’t choose him as your leader unless you thought what he was doing in the capital of the world (New York) is what we want the church to represent.”
That “confident Catholicism” sounds good. Let’s see how it plays.
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
Just in time for parishioners to pass the plate this weekend and raise funds for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are expected Tuesday to tighten guidelines for giving financial support to groups that empower the poor.
Tighten? From whose perspective? Not from that of Catholics and others who see anomaly in RC funding of groups that flout RC teaching.
Brachear’s “tighten” remains in her lede in this story — about reverting to the community-organizing bias of Catholic Campaign for Human Development decision-makers — but it’s gone from the online head, where the home-delivery hard copy “tighten” becomes “adjust.”
Catholic bishops adjusting guidelines for funding programs in campaign against poverty
is indeed more like it.
So somebody’s minding the store at the Trib, trying to save the day, though you can hardly blame the hard-copy editors for going with the lede in its head, “Catholic bishops tighten rules on aid for poor.”
Point? Why does Brachear thinks it’s a tightening when it’s a loosening — relaxing a ban on giving money to abortion-referring organizations and the like?
WHY WAIT UNTIL NOVEMBER? – DONATE TODAY! Your tax-deductible contributions can always be mailed directly to our office at anytime. This method guarantees that you will receive a tax-deduction letter mailed directly to you right away.
Make checks payable to “The Chicago CCHD” and mail them to:
Chicago CCHD – Attn: Rey Flores . . . . .
But what’s above has been scrubbed. Rey Flores doesn’t work there any more, having been fired a few weeks ago as the Chicago campaign’s director and replaced by an aide, Interim Program Director Tamara Fedoryshyn. Flores had worked out a compromise with pro-lifers who protested grants to anti-life-connected groups. His guidelines for 2011 grants remain on site —
. . . . Projects must address poverty with respect to Catholic values and must conform to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.
Organizations must use Chicago CCHD funding solely for the purpose stated in their application and cannot participate in any activity contrary to Catholic teaching (i.e. abortion, non-traditional marriage, euthanasia, racism, support for the death penalty, etc.). . . . .
— with Flores as contact person, but Fedoryshyn is the new contact person everywhere else, and archdiocesan blog items by Floressay he was the program director.
The removal happened some time after Oct. 2, when he led the annual Justice Day at Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica. No hint was given by anyone on that occasion that Flores was tagged for demolition. He was apparently sandbagged.
Also present and prominent in the day’s activities, celebrating and preaching at the mid-day mass, was Fr. Larry Dowling, pastor of St. Agatha parish in Lawndale, whose Nov. 2 letter to Cardinal George referred to Flores in the past tense as Chicago CCHD’s “former director.”
The letter was a statement of counter-protest, Dowling (a dean and consultor to the cardinal) speaking for a number of priests who found the changes on Flores’s watch grossly incompatible with CCHD tradition and principles. He accused Flores of inflicting “great damage” that included
false information about CCHD . . . disseminated by those who oppose the Church’s promotion of empowering the poor. . . . . a lack of proper vetting and formation of new members of the CCHD selection team. . . . an attempt to limit the funding of community organizing in general. . . .
The letter is a plea for community organizing rather than direct service to the poor, quoting Flores, “Community organizing takes too long. We’re going to concentrate on direct service.”
The letter complains about
lay people [on a newly constituted selection committee] who openly described CCHD as defective and ‘needing fixing.’ One member was quoted as saying, “The Church really needs to drop the term ‘social justice’ and concentrate on direct service”
but calls for “a selection process that engages lay people,” apparently meaning lay people who agree with these priests about what’s to be done.
Flores got the ax at some point between Justice Day and Dowling-letter day, making October a bad month for him — and it seems for pro-lifers’ efforts to change how money is distributed.
The letter is a case apparently of striking while the iron is hot — moving to reverse immediately the changes of 2010. If it’s a sign of how the wind is blowing in the organizing-vs.-service controversy — we might say Alinsky vs. Dorothy Day — the future looks bleak for the “real reform” of CCHD practices brokered by Flores in response to objections by Catholic Citizens of Illinois and other groups.
Do non-profits usually operate this way? Bounce a program director without a by-your-leave to their donating publics?
Is this non-profit (the archdiocese) slipping something past its public only weeks before the big giving day — the Nov. 20–21 weekend in the Catholic churches of two counties?
It’s something of more than passing interest to the inquiring pew-sitter.
ChiTrib’s Eric Zorn does Danny Davis nicely today:
“We have to reassess the operation of city government and make some serious determinations about what our needs are,” said Chicago mayoral hopeful and Democratic U.S Rep. Danny Davis Wednesday evening. We must “see whether or not there are any additional revenue generators or enhancers, and then make decisions and determinations on the basis of that.”
I curled into the fetal position on the couch in front of the television and began whimpering as Davis’ interview with WTTW-Ch. 11’s Carol Marin continued.
Tom Roeser would object on at least one count. Zorn calls it Davis’s “magnificent baritone” voice; Roeser has it “basso profundo,” which I find more evocative but can’t say if more accurate.
Danny D. wants to be mayor, as most of us know. Zorn finds him not only vague and thus noncommittal on solving fiscal problems but also redundant, with his idea to merge Cultural Affairs with Special Events — Mayordaley II has that in his latest budget. At a savings of “less than a tenth of a percent of the city’s $6.15 billion budget,” by the way.
But that cornerstone of Danny’s fiscal strategy might not even make it in a Davis administration. Why? Because Danny D. embodies taxing and spending philosophy as perhaps no other elected official in the history of the republic.
It’s here, where his dismissal of financial worries over the not yet passed Obamacare is recorded. And will be recorded elsewhere in too-long-dormant accounts of his townhall meetings last spring in Oak Park and Westchester. For now, however, in the immortal goodbye of Porky Pig, th-th-that’s all, folks.
It wasn’t being gay that cost Laine Tadlock her job in administration at Benedictine University’s Springfield campus. Her orientation was no secret to her employers. They knew when she was hired five years ago, Tadlock said.
It wasn’t that she and her spouse, Kae Helstrom, went to Iowa this summer to be married, after a 2009 Iowa Supreme Court ruling opened the door to gay marriages in that state. Her employer knew the marriage was happening, too, she said.
But when Helstrom’s and Tadlock’s wedding announcement was published in The State Journal-Register, it was the beginning of the end for Tadlock’s tenure as director of the education program at Benedictine.
You push and push and push, not knowing when to stop, looking for trouble (when enough will come your way without looking), and lo and behold, the institution says enough already.
In a Sept. 30 letter to Tadlock’s attorney, Benedictine President William Carroll wrote, “… By publicizing the marriage ceremony in which she participated in Iowa she has significantly disregarded and flouted core religious beliefs which, as a Catholic institution, it is our mission to uphold.”
Of course. It’s a crazy mixed-up world at best, where every last jot and tittle cannot be made a case of. But flouting? That’s something else. What was she thinking of?
Books forever. But new ones, apart from what are needed for Christian, Jewish, and other worship services? (He mentions only Jewish.) Forget about them.
What liberal Dem, progressive, etc. would object to this as a political platform?
“We ask that government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living.
The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within the confines and be for the good of all.
Therefore, we demand: … an end to the power of financial interest. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand … the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments.
In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our system of public education….
We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents…. The government must undertake the improvement of public health — by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor — by the greatest possible support for all groups concerned with the physical education of youth.
[W]e combat the … materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good.”
Probably not the educating-of-gifted part, based on this parent’s experience of public K-8 schooling in Oak Park IL.
Blithe Spirit 