Author: Jim Bowman

Jim Bowman covered religion 1968-78 for the Chicago Daily News, since then has written books, articles, etc., mostly on corporate history but also on religion (Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968), and more recently on politics (Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters -- Lulu.com, Kindle). Longtime Oak Park, Illinois, resident, he lives now on Chicago's North Side, where four of his and Winnie's six children live close by.

Second-guessing sermons: Giving mystery its due

I do believe such second-guessing is a worthy pursuit, especially for former preachers who can be seen sometimes squirming in the pew. (He made his bed and lies in it, procrustean though it be.)

That said, I wonder if this 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B, should be a time for considering ours as something of a mystery religion. I’d start with the reference in First Kings, 19 to the “broom tree” under which Elijah sat, pooped, after a day in the desert.

What kind of broom tree? Whisk? Push? Floor? Venetian blind?

I jest, of course. But the Sunday reading is often hard enough to grasp without having to deal with so odd, if helpful to Elijah, a protuberance.

As a preacher, I would pounce on this broom-tree business as one of many mysteries we are presented with in this thousands-of-years-old literature. I would make something of that, voicing my puzzlement and I think striking a chord with pew-sitters.

I would make that  a quick entry into discussion of the much bigger mysteries we are faced with. In this day’s readings alone, we find these:

  • The angel who set the table for Elijah — a hearth cake and a jug of water. Oh?
  • Paul’s message in Ephesians 4 that Christ (not Jesus, as we say, lest we offend Jews, who do not accept him as the Christ) loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God
  • Jesus in John 6 calling himself the bread that came down from heaven (middle-eastern metaphor?)
  • Jesus saying no one can come to him unless the Father who sent him draw him,
    “and I will raise him on the last day.”
  • Jesus calling himself “the bread of life.”
  • Jesus: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert [Elijah ate a hearth cake], but they died.”
  • Consider the lowly hearth cake, by the way, “how people managed . . . without an oven. . . . They made hearth cakes which are a cross between a cake and a biscuit. . . . also known as Singing Hinnies because they used to sing when they were placed on the hot hearth stone. The hearth stone is a large flat stone in front of the fire. Alternatively, they can be made in a frying pan instead if you don’t have a hearth stone [which most of us don’t].
  • Jesus: “This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

It’s all mystery. Some of us are used to it, but to many it’s still a head-scratcher of the first order. No wonder the Jews murmured.

I’d say it should be treated as mysterious — the only way to do justice to its meaning. We should treat it, I think, as something so much out of the ordinary that it is hard to believe.

Simple repetition is not the mother of devotion.

“I believe, Lord. Help thou my unbelief” is the appropriate stance. Was good enough once, should be so now.

Social ethic has its place, but what does it do for business expansion?

Here’s the close to an editorial, “Can Portland capitalize on its popularity with millennials” in The Oregonian, a paper I read the other day while in that fair city.

It’s a cautious but convincing word for less government regulation and less tree-hugging if there is to be a business renaissance.

Where does all of this leave Portland? The city’s social ethic fits well with the millennial generation, which is one reason so many 20-somethings move here. The city is fertile ground for social entrepreneurs, who prioritize a cause over profits.

But Portland also needs to be welcoming to young entrepreneurs interested in starting traditional businesses. That means helping would-be business owners navigate the regulatory system and taking steps to keep office rents and other start-up costs, including taxes, from spiraling out of control.

Otherwise, the gaps between the aspirations of Portland’s millennials and their ability to achieve their goals will only grow.

In a letter to the editorial page, I noted their “Balancing idealism with gritty realities,” with accompanying example and conclusion, “Sometimes there are legitimate reasons that businesses don’t put a higher priority on societal problems.”

I added that “to float such heresy in your (or Chicago’s) climate is admirable.”

He say, I say, the question is the question

Sat. 8/8/15, 7:30 a.m., Clark and Bryn Mawr, NE corner. 

Man on bicycle sees me, I nod hello, he stops on sidewalk. He is bald of dark brown (bullet) head, soft of tone. Says something.

 I say, “What?”

 He say, in soft, unaccented tone, “Can I ask you a question?”

 I say “No.”

He pulls away on sidewalk, heading east on Bryn Mawr, N side of street.

Sat. 8/8/15, 7:30, Clark and Bryn M., NE corner.

Commentary on this event:

 1. He had already made bold to ask me a question, so asking, “Can I ask?” was superfluous and on its face suspicious.

 2. I try not to answer questions, period, at Clark and Bryn Mawr at 7:30 in the morning, if I can help it.

 3. I did not feel like giving him some money for carfare.

 4. I did not recognize him as a long lost friend.

 5. I do not know where to get a nice hairpiece at this hour.

 6. He talked too softly for my taste. I like to hear it when people ask me questions, with or without my permission.

 7. It was too nice a morning for questions.

 8. I had enough unanswered questions of my own, without adding any.

 9. I had a book to read, which is why this is my final word on the subject.

The book is Wyndham Lewis, A Soldier of Humor and Selected Writings, edited with introduction by Raymond Rosenthal (Signet Classic, 1966), which I got cheap from ABEbooks.com and which I recommend.

W. Lewis, Soldie of Humor cover

School days, school days . . .

My friend Jack Spatafora talks up the end of summer in an e-blast:

Remember when schools opened the day after Labor Day…? No longer. Another tradition iced. Instead, these once-languid days of August are now witnessing a clutter of school and college openings. And with them, the unofficial start of a new year.
 
You can feel it in the air as parents and children change their rhythms…faculties gear up….local retailers stock up
…and the city’s mood segues from relaxing to striving. If you look really close, Chicagoland is becoming a giant mural you can actually study in live-action.
 
Starting with the pre-school kids out there eyeing their siblings bus off to the grand mystery known as the classroom…then the sibs themselves, conflicted between reluctance and anticipation…along with those traffic guards grand-parenting their wards along the way….and don’t forget the faculties waiting in a local school or somewhere in a distant campus.
 
This is a living mural of a living population gearing up for a whoosh of events hurtling us toward that distant trio of Fall/Winter holidays now almost in sight. It’s something like waking up in a time warp, for before you and those youngsters quite realized, it has made its imperative entrance.
 
True, there is an entire aura of politics, terrorists, and globalists hovering over everything else. However for now, for August, for Chicago, this is the world that counts most. Kids — yours and mine — filling the mural with yet another new year’s burst of dreams and dreads.
 
Watching them, we have to hope [and help] those dreams beat out those dreads….
. . . Happy golden-rule days . . .

This whole married-deacon thing could pave the way . . .

. . . towards ordaining married men to the priesthood, as commenter Margeret McCarthy points out in the preceding post.

A change, allowing married men to become priests or to allow priests the right to marry might allow the deaconate ordinands a swift assent to the priesthood, quickly lessening the problem of the shortage of priests.

In other words, we have in place a training program, upgradeable to priest-training. I recall telling the wife of our parish’s newly ordained deacon — one of us, he was — that I marveled at her new role, as wife of an ordained man. It was at a parish picnic.

She seemed to appreciate it. It was as if she hadn’t thought of it that way, so seamlessly had the married diaconate come upon us.

This was years ago, early in the Chicago experience of it. As a laicized priest by then married and with kids, speaking from another era — before the revolution — I saw it as a thing to marvel at.

More to come about this general issue, I hope with references to what others say about it who have given it more thought than I.

Added thought about married priest: Marriage would indeed complicate a priest’s life, which could be a good thing.

Dirge for deaths of Latin, God, and mystery

Blithe Spirit

Before I do one more thing in this late-starting Tuesday morning, a word from Mr. Hickey of Leo Catholic HS:

In my lifetime, I witnessed the euthanizing of Latin and the Death of God by academics and churchmen.  Latin was deemed irrelevant, the vernacular ascended to Parnassus and the Vatican dome.  That is too bad.  The mystery of learning has gone the way of sacred liturgy -no mystery and no beauty.  Education means punching one’s ticket for entry to something else.

Such a mournful mouthfull. Congratulations, Hickey.

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Same-sex-attracted Roman Catholic priests, what about them?

I speak of percentages here. What per cent of RC priests are same-sex-attracted (SSA) compared to priests and other ministers of religion who have the marriage option?

Would RC ordination of married men or legitimization of a priest’s taking a wife — just one, until death they were parted — reduce said percentage?

Would such a change in RC customs reduce the influence of SSA priests and bishops in the councils and consultations of clergy members, as in undercutting support for SSA-friendly moral teaching and practice?

Loaded question that last, brimming with certain assumptions.

Such changes, of course are in no way guaranteed, assuming they are in order, the church being an imperfect institution, the Body of Christ on earth after all, not (yet) in heaven.

May I pursue these questions in later posts? I may just do that.

Dirge for deaths of Latin, God, and mystery

Before I do one more thing in this late-starting Tuesday morning, a word from Mr. Hickey of Leo Catholic HS:

In my lifetime, I witnessed the euthanizing of Latin and the Death of God by academics and churchmen.  Latin was deemed irrelevant, the vernacular ascended to Parnassus and the Vatican dome.  That is too bad.  The mystery of learning has gone the way of sacred liturgy -no mystery and no beauty.  Education means punching one’s ticket for entry to something else.

Such a mournful mouthfull. Congratulations, Hickey.

Teeing off on Chicago archdiocese: On being a hero misguidedly

Greenpeace co-founder is not impressed with the archdiocese’s buy-in to warming dangers as expressed by Chicago’s Archbishop Blaise Cupich, echoing Pope Francis:

“Those who do not think religious organizations should have an opinion on climate change misunderstand the purpose of the former and the moral dimensions of the latter,” [Archbishop] Cupich said at a Chicago press conference with EPA Secretary Gina McCarthy.
But the archdiocese’s new awareness of energy issues has nothing to do with mistaking the purpose of the Church, according to Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace.
“A lot of world leaders are taking a measurement of what people are thinking, and they all want to be the hero on this one,” Moore said in a phone interview with Watchdog Arena.
“Of course, that’s fairly natural for religion to do, because they’re always trying to save souls.”

Saving souls. It’s been a while since most churchgoers heard that sort of talk which smacks of supernaturalism.

Moore, who holds a PhD in ecology from the University of British Columbia, says many see the climate change movement as a form of religion, but for him, it has more to do with pointing to the “original sin.”
“What they’re basically saying is that we are the enemies of the Earth and the environment, and therefore we should do everything we can to make it seem as though we are not really here,” he said.

A new form of Pogo’s “We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.”

Shortly after Pope Francis released his encyclical on climate change earlier this year, Cupich re-emphasized the Holy Father’s concern that global warming would eventually devastate the Earth.
“The Holy Father urges us to stop the steady march to a warmer planet that will change sea levels and crop growing patterns, parch fields and promote famine, and lead to human misery on a scale yet unimagined,” he said.

He’s a true believer, he is.

Cupich said Pope Francis wanted to reduce the use of fossil fuels, rely more on renewable energy sources and re-think over-cooled and over-heated homes and workplaces.
Moore, who left Greenpeace in 1986 and has since become a global warming skeptic, said such suggestions create within the minds of the Catholic faithful “a self-defeating guilt trip.”

Forgive me, Father, I have neglected to recycle.

“You’re afraid you’re going to kill your kids and grandchildren by running your SUV, and you feel guilty for doing it,” Moore said. “The reasoning appeals to those two human motivators – guilt and fear – and for some reason, there’s always been somebody standing on the street corner with a sign saying, ‘the end is nigh.’”

Sandwich-board Catholicism.

Moore, who said he left Greenpeace when his fellow directors abandoned science and plunged into social activism, warned, “We are really doing a disservice by teaching people that fossil fuels are evil. Fossil fuels are, in fact, the largest solar storage of energy there is on the earth.”
Fossil fuels originated in plants and plankton, which grew by photosynthesis in the sea and on the land, and are now buried deep in the earth, Moore said. “They are 100 percent organic, they were created by solar energy, so they were renewable at the time, and now they’re the largest storage batteries on the earth.”

Heretic.

Cupich said Pope Francis is concerned that abuse of the environment will adversely affect the poor, who are the most vulnerable.
“They suffer most from the degradation of the earth – they are the least protected from the increasingly violent swings of nature caused by global warming,” the the archbishop said. “The poor have the greatest exposure to air pollution, droughts, unsafe drinking water and the spread of diseases.”

Oh?

“I’ll tell you what’s worse on the poor – not having any energy to heat their homes,” Moore said in response to the archbishop’s comments. “To hold that position is either extreme naiveté or it’s not caring about what happens.”

Unlike Cupich and the Pope, Moore is optimistic.

“The idea that we are enemies of the earth is a terrible thing to tell our children, because we are from the Earth, we evolved with the rest of life,” he said. “Personally, I’m extremely optimistic about the evolution of our consciousness on this subject.”

Well.