Tom Roeser lays cards on table:

READERS’ NOTE; This story [“The USCCB Pontificates”] …as all others in this blog…reflects my personal opinion and not that of any organization with which I am voluntarily affiliated—civic, charitable, political, social and religious. This is stated so as to notify any board or advisory committee  members of such organizations of my independent status as a journalist and my right of free speech… in case they are contacted by the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago urging them to silence me…as was attempted last month.   For further information see U.S. Constitution’s 1^st amendment written by James Madison and adopted December 15, 1791.

sought to use the name of the Catholic Church officially [to] help the Obama administration pass ObamaCare if Hyde language were included, [and] is now wantonly and partisanly interfering in domestic politics by issuing a statement that wraps electoral aspects of the immigration issue in the folds of social justice where in fact they do not belong. 

* Reading Pound’s Pisan Cantos — p. 39 of New Directions ‘48 edition — I find “the American lady, K.H.” inquiring for d’Annunzio.  Who she?  Who he?  She, I dunno.  He was Gabriele D’A, poet, novelist, war hero, predecessor of Mussolini and for a time his rival for fascist affections.

* “Black Friday,” said a nameless Chi public school coach about two days ago, when lots were fired from CPS sports jobs as deficit kicks in (which ObamaCare will exacerbate).  Oh?  Black is bad?  He’s allowed to talk that way? 

One who was fired or downsized, not from a sports job but from the office that kept its list of clouted applicants for elite schools, was Greg Minniefield, who is black. 

Which means every day is black for him, and beautiful too, as Rev. Jesse J. used to say, when he wasn’t putting big financial squeezes on big companies.  So quite a disconnect here.

Don’t joke about a guy losing his job, you say.  But we assume he’s clouted and will find something else, or someone somebody sent will find one for him.

* Lacking the resources of a Mayor Daley, who plowed up an airport in the dead of night, surprising the air traffic controller on his way to work next morning, Quincy Miller (not the b-baller) had to do his night-time mischief one bleacher seat at a time, denuding the spanking new stands at Orr High on the West Side, from which he lived a block away.  800 of them, over three months, without being stopped.  He also “hacked,” I presume chiseled or sawed, off some of this new stadium’s aluminum facing.

He was chased by a security guard in January, dropping a cell phone which was given to the police, but not till Friday was he caught and charged.  Mayor Daley has never been charged.

* The Rev. Lawrence Murphy abuse case.  Abuse took place at a Milwaukee-area school for the deaf.  150 cases (200, says NYT), from ‘50s to ‘74.  He admitted it, was sent to a retreat house.  Twenty years later the Congregation for Defense of the Faith, which Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, then headed, declined to try him, sentencing him instead to do penance.  NYT has the story, reprised by AP in Sun-Times, Manya Brachear and free-lancer Marie Rhode in Chi Trib.

Rev. Lawrence Murphy

M. died in ‘98 at 72.  Victims’ accounts include his assaulting boys in their dorm beds while others saw or heard it and knew it was going on.  In ‘90s, Cardinal Bertone of the CDF said M. was too old, sick, it happened too long ago.  M. was also forbidden to say mass outside his diocese.  Whistle had been blown in ‘74 by Chicago priest working in deaf ministry, Rev. David Walsh.  He told Archbp Meyer, then of Milwaukee, to whom M. admitted charges.  M. was sent for a time to a retreat house up north in Wis. 

Walsh also told Archbp Cousins, Meyer’s successor, and then the apostolic delegate in Wash., DC.  But what sent M. packing was confrontation with alums of the school with Milwaukee Sentinel reporters.  He denied all, resigned from the school.  In ‘93, more accusations, investigation started in Rome, with results as above.  Card. Bertone, Ratzinger’s #2 man at CDF, gave M. a pass, citing a now defunct one-month statute of limitations on reporting abuse during confession.

God being in his heaven does not mean all’s right with the world, pace the Browning character.  Neither does so much being wrong with the world mean God’s not in his heaven.  Or so I believe.

Beginning to clear out the augean stables of various note pads strewn throughout various pockets, desks, tables including dining room, shelves, and other points of interest:

* Old friend Bob K., Democrat leaning Socialist if not there already, quotes Scripture to his purpose of selling the then in ramming process now accompli Obama-scare, a.k.a.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act

 (not kidding), while dwelling also on plight of poor.  To him I say, as to old friend Joan, who buttonholed me on OP Avenue some months back and recommended my reading the Bible, your unimpeachable motivation should not be confused with strategy. 

You assume Obama-scare is good for poor people, even as public school and other public budgets are slashed because of a dearth of public money.  Tax more, you say, but there’s an end to that somewhere, as businesses cut back under tax burdens and the nation heads for big fiscal trouble. 

Bob, Joan, all you good Christian and other kind-hearted people, consider what you want done to the common weal.  Your commendable impulses are getting us all in big trouble, especially the poorest among us, as I told you, Bob, in our recent email exchange.  I won’t say “repent” — I’m not one to offer or demand that alternative — but I do say rethink your position.

* More later from the stables . . . .