Catch Sarah Palin on the Tucson murders, the aftermath, and us.
Here:
Category: Blithe Spirit
How keen is your crozier? (Modified)
Eugene Kennedy does the Chicago cardinal up brown.
Questioning whether Francis George’s is “the keenest crozier at the conclave,” he recalls the great man’s initial meeting with psychiatrist Sara Charles, Kennedy’s wife.
“I’ve looked into your book” — Authority: The Most Misunderstood Idea in America — “and I’ll tell you where you’re wrong.”
“It’s too Jungian,” George began, but my wife cut him off: “There is nothing Jungian in it. It’s based on the work of the Catholic philosopher, Yves Simon.”
“It is?” the startled George replied but did not wait for an answer.
[It’s a 1997 book, co-authored by Kennedy, by the way. We take Kennedy’s word for the implications here; he does not say when it happened or in what circumstances. Not a receiving line, we must presume, for instance.]
Interviewing George as “the U.S. bishops’ thinker-in-chief,” NC Reporter’s John Allen “suggests that many Catholics would like to see Cardinal Law-like resignations from bishops who covered up or reassigned sex abusing priests.
To which George:
Law — who, as his great patron put him in line to become archbishop of Chicago as soon as he heard that Cardinal Bernardin had a fatal illness — “went into exile.”
I guess so, but remaining on six powerful Roman congregations, being in charge of a prestigious basilica and living in splendid apartments does not sound like Elba to most people.
[Yes. Law blew it in Boston, got transferred (in style) to the home office. George can’t or won’t get this.]
Asked if he was surprised that New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan was elected president of the U.S. bishops’ conference over then-vice president Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas,
thereby breaking the conference’s tradition of selecting its outgoing vice-president as its new president, George cuts right to the chase: “Yes and no.”
Oh my. Painful to watch.
[As Gene K. presents it. But the rest of what George said is important here, which I failed to check. Sloppily. After the easily criticized “yes and no,” George:
I expected [the election] to be very close, but . . . had assumed the custom would be followed. . . . The discussion [about the election] was going on [among the bishops], and we [he and Kicanas] knew it. It was fed by many factors, which have been analyzed and discussed. Some interpreted it ideologically, but I don’t know there’s that much ideological difference. Some saw it in terms of different eras – new bishops and old bishops. Obviously, Bishop Kicanas has the capacity and the personality to be president of our conference, and so does Archbishop Dolan. Maybe some bishops simply thought, since both are worthy candidates, why should we be bound by a rule we didn’t make?
[This last sentence makes no sense that I can see, but at least he didn’t let it go at “yes and no.” He also defended Kicanas as working “extraordinarily” hard at coordinating bishops’ committees, which is fair enough. All in all, his remarks on this matter were forthcoming enough, if not persuasive.
[As for his wanting to study and read more in retirement, it was a relaxed interview and he was candid in a personal matter. Retirement? That’s the biggest issue raised in the whole article. Does he mean to do so at 75, in a year?]
Lots more of what the cardinal said — and decide for yourself — at “Picking the brain of the U.S. bishops’ thinker-in-chief.“
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Not easy to be Catholic
Here’s a hot one. This Catholic college can’t claim to be Catholic:
In In re Manhattan College, (NLRB, Jan. 10, 2010), a National Labor Relations Board regional director held that the judicially and administratively developed exemption from NLRB coverage for colleges whose purpose is the propagation of a religious faith does not apply to New York’s Manhattan College.
Its adjunct faculty wanted to unionize, the college claimed not be required to brook it.
The decision concludes that the evidence shows the purpose of the college is secular. It finds that there is little risk that exercising NLRB jurisdiction will lead to unconstitutional entanglement of government and religion because the “school’s stated purpose does not involve the propagation of a religious faith, teachers are not required to adhere to or promote religious tenets, a religious order does not exercise control over hiring, firing, or day-to-day operations, and teachers are given academic freedom…” [italics added]
The union had argued that the college “does not meet the test of a religious institution,” the NLRB bought the argument, in the face of this from the college president:
[T]he fact that we are a welcoming, pluralistic community is being presented as proof that we cannot be an authentic Catholic college. Questions about the number of brothers in various roles imply that the work of lay faculty, staff, and administrators is negligible in forwarding our mission, and betrays a complete incomprehension of a full generation’s hard and faithful work in passing forward the charism of religious orders to lay colleagues. [italics added]
Oh my, this “charism” business, which is trundled out whenever people notice that priests or brothers or sisters are distinctly minority figures on campus, as if years of training and lifetime commitment can be transfused to the unordained, the non-vowed, the non-religious-disciplined on demand.
The word should be banned in religious circles.
He falls, he bleeds
Up today at Chicago Catholic News, Fr. Pfleger in Bob McClory’s new book:
(POSTED: 1/12/11) “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”
— Percy B. Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”
“We lepers.”
— Fr. Damien to his flock on Molokai
The Rev. Michael Pfleger is no Shelley, but he has a Romantic’s intensity of personal experience and self-absorption. He’s also a paradigm of latter-day Roman Catholic activism who has found in Robert McClory his perfect delineator.
Indeed, it could be argued that Pfleger has answered the call to action more perfectly than any other, making him and McClory a match made in Detroit, home of the Call to Action movement with which McClory is closely identified.
Neither is big on a Divine Providence approach to being Catholic. Instead they put their chips on a firm belief in the power of human beings to change the course of history. . . . .
more more more . . . .
The ABC’s of getting it right
Some nice explanation here from various experts about what’s been wrong with the RC liturgy and how it will change come next December, the first Sunday of Advent, 2011:
The original translation of the Roman Missal into English was carried out under 1969 Vatican rules that stressed simplicity, modernity and other factors that would make the language of the liturgy more comprehensible and participatory.
I believe it.
[T]here was concern “that the language has been too laid back” and failed to convey the rich liturgical heritage of the Roman rite.
Yep.
The new translation [in December] shows an effort “to heighten the language a bit” and capture “the transcendence as well as the imminence of God,” he says.
Yes, give us a taste of something special here, alert us to the mystery.
“. . . To radically simplify the language is often to dilute the concept.”
Not to make light of the problem that led to simplifying things, but you do lose something. I like the challenge the translators are recognizing. Let’s hope they meet it.
Catch me later about this
Man in the U.K. Catholic Herald, William Oddie, contrasts the going version of Scripture read at mass in the U.K. (Jerusalem Bible) and it’s “ghastly, tone-deaf, flat-footed mediocrity” with the 400-year-old King James and yet older, later revised, Douay-Rheims versions.
As in last Sunday’s “This is my beloved son” passage, where Jesus asks John the Baptist to baptize him, John hesitates, and Jesus says go ahead, do it:
[T]he sentence rendered by King James [Douai-Rheims] as But John forbad [stayed] him, saying: I ought to be baptised by thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering, said to him: Suffer it to be so now, appears in the Jerusalem Bible as John tried to dissuade him. It is I who need baptism from you, he said, and yet you come to me! But Jesus replied, Leave it like this for the time being.
I am not making this up: Leave it like this for the time being is how this wretched travesty renders what ought to be memorable words, as though our Lord were a car salesman with a special offer, or a politician suggesting some murky compromise.
He’d like to see leeway granted by bishops over there as to what version one may use, and I’d like to see it over here, where our New American Bible put the sentence thus: Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness,” which also limps.
Leftward, ho, even with Daley around
This may be a bit of comfort food for the angry, radical left soul of Michelle Obama, who advised students to shun the world of business. We know about Chicago’s Bill Daley . . .
Meanwhile, flying under the radar, is the appointment of Tina Tchen, another Chicagoan, as Michelle Obama’s chief-of-staff. Tchen is a hard leftist.
An acquaintance of hers told me (with a bit of exaggeration, I assume) that Tchen makes Dennis Kucinich look like a right-wing extremist.
According to sources, when Tchen practiced law as a partner at a big Chicago firm [Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom], she was the scourge of more than one associate unfortunate enough to have made his or her conservative views known.
Remember, says Bill of PowerLine Blog, “hard leftists” still “prowl” the White House, even if Bill Daley does not fit the description.
Not for anyone’s profit
This from the site of Oak Park’s Buzz Cafe is alternately moving and convincing (not the same thing) in re: a proposed low-cost-housing proposal for Madison Street in Oak Park. Reference is to the formerly Comcast building. It’s empty since Comcast decamped for parts more favorable to headquartering its business, in DuPage County. (Imagine that.)
The letter says a lot about what I call The Grand Planning of Well-meaning, Socially Aware Not-for-Profit People with Money to Spend. I may be biased, but from long experience, dating at least from my time on the Interreligious Council on Urban Affairs in the ’60s, I am ever suspicious of such endeavors, especially if it has “interfaith” in its name. This one also has “Catholic.”
Both carry with them a dangerous propensity to equate great ideas for helping people with feasible great ideas that do no harm on their way to, or at least in the direction of, fruition.
The letter:
Letter from the Editor
Guest Viewpoint: Demetrios Pappageorge
My name is Demetrios Pappageorge and I live at 430 S. Grove Avenue, and I am no stranger to the poor. I worked with the homeless in Champaign throughout college. As parents, we took our daughters to rallies in D.C. shouting No More Shelters We Want Houses! In Oak Park, we have served lunch to PADS, built homes for Habitat, and managed a 35-unit building for Oak Park Res. Corp., where we worked and lived side-by-side with the working poor. It was magic and it was a struggle.
Magic because at times, particularly the building barbecues, everyone came together. Despite differences in income, education, orientation, religion, or politics, people ate together and made offers to drive to Jewel or watch children for an hour.
It was a struggle because some folks lived in squalor; a toddler was left knee-deep in trash and neighboring units were plagued by a cockroach infestation; Police and DCFS were called due to theft, domestic violence, and mental illness. One enterprising teen was turning tricks in the basement with a line of men outside her apartment.
When it was good, it was very very good, but when it was bad, it was horrid; however, even when tenants were terrified to call the police for fear of retribution from an abusive neighbor, there was always someone on-hand 24/7, unlike the Interfaith Project which does not include a resident manager.
Our building had a small percentage of the poor sprinkled into 35 mixed-income units, and included people with the means to help. Interfaiths project is 51 units with 100% low-income. This literally keeps me up at night, and it is, in no uncertain terms, a recipe for disaster for the proposed tenants and our village.
Oak Park has an incredible history of folding people-of-need into the fabric of the entire community. We have over 700 vouchers and low-income units in existing buildings! That number dwarfs the combined total of Forest Park, River Forest, Des Plaines, and Berwyn put together. And our system grants tenants anonymity and dignity to live, learn and prosper as productive members of our village – without being segregated. For this we should be very proud.
Now some wish to turn their backs on this dignified and seamless system. Though the Oak Park way is being adopted by cities all around the country, some wish to return us to an failed approach that research warns us to avoid. In his writings like Blueprint for Disaster, Roosevelt University Professor D. Bradford Hunt discusses New Urbanist thinking and the need for mixed-income housing. New Urbanism prevents projects from standing out as separate spaces reserved for the poor, like this Interfaith Project where residents would feel, as Professor Hunt puts it, stigmatized in the eyes of other city residents.
In addition HUD advocates for mixed-income housing, and the CHA stated, No longer will public housing tenants be isolated as second-class citizens in reservations.
As a person of faith, this reminds me of the parable of the sower. In shallow rocky soil, seeds die unable to take root. Conversely seeds thrive when spread out over fertile soil.
As a schoolteacher, I want to know what lesson the village would be teaching our children? That we should separate low-income residents from the rest of society?
3 more problems include:
ONE: The plan relies on funding that chains it to being 100% low-income. Besides going against Oak Parks policy of diversity assurance, this funding is the tail wagging the dog. First and foremost, should we not be looking at what is best for current and future tenants? For their dignity and the integrity and stability of the neighborhood, let us not chain ourselves to this flawed plan due to their proposed funding
TWO: This project punishes folks for bettering their lives. Since it is for single adults, Interfaith tenants who find love and life-partners will be forced to move out. Since it excludes those who earn too much, tenants who climb the economic ladder will be rewarded with eviction. What motivation will there be for betterment?
THREE: The Interfaith plan also relies on success of the commercial spaces in this stagnant economy. If the project fails, Oak Park is left with even more empty retail spaces with inadequate parking, and a building full of dorm-sized units. A beautiful façade with a lousy business and floor plan is unacceptable.
As an 18-year resident of Oak Park, I truly appreciate your time and effort. And I urge you to reject these variances because the density, parking, and height do not enhance our village, and they would only serve to put into place a housing project that is not progressive, not inclusionary, and definitely not what is best for the future tenants, the neighborhood, nor Oak Park.
A prominent new Sophist
Slouching toward insolvency
Just got this. Welcome to Illinois, which don’t need no stinkin’ Amazon Associates business anyhow. 
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Please note that this not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Amazon Associates Program. But if the governor signs this bill, we will need to terminate the participation of all Illinois residents in the Associates Program. After that point, we will no longer pay any advertising fees for sales referred to amazon.com, endless.com and smallparts.com nor will we accept new applications for the Associates Program from Illinois residents. The unfortunate consequences of this legislation on Illinois residents like you were explained to the legislature, including Senate and House leadership, as well as to the governor’s staff. Over a dozen other states have considered essentially identical legislation but have rejected these proposals largely because of the adverse impact on their states’ residents. Governor Quinn’s office may be reached here. We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you continued success in the future. Sincerely, Amazon.com |
