Burma has been in the news recently with the wake of Cyclone Nargis and the junta’s reluctance to admit foreign aid to the country’s suffering citizens. On The Weekly Standard’s website, Joseph Loconte points out the ways in which the UN has done nothing to fight the tyranny of the Burmese government.
For a more theological take on the question of natural disasters in Burma, see David B. Hart’s piece on our homepage.
In a CNN money report today, there’s a list of the ten real-estate markets expected to post the biggest declines over the next year. Among them:
#1) Miami, Fla., 12-month forecast: -24.9%
#2) Fort Lauderdale, Fla., 12-month forecast: -22.2%
#3) Orlando, Fla., 12-month forecast: -21%
#6) West Palm Beach, Fla., 12-month forecast: -17.6%
#7) Tampa, Fla., 12-month forecast: -17.1%
Hmm. Too bad the data doesn’t reveal any pattern.
I’d heard that someone had written a children’s story about the pope’s life as told from a cat’s perspective. I thought it was a novel idea, and when a publicist asked if I’d like a copy, I said I’d take a look. Joseph and Chico is by an Italian journalist living in Bavaria. You can tell that she’s not usually the author of children’s books, and there’s an excess of cutesy cat jokes for my taste. But where else are you going to read about B16’s favorite Christmas teddy bear, or the time he fell into the fish pond and was rescued by his siblings? The book is a great introduction to Joseph Ratzinger for children, and shows the humble background from which he came. It also has an introduction from the pope’s private secretary, Fr. Georg Gänswein, who, among other things, summarizes the life and work of Benedict in four sentences: “To begin with, I agree with the fact that the Holy Father is a special person, but it is above all because he is a real friend of Jesus. This is important! Here is the secret of his life: only by becoming a true friend of Jesus can we learn to open our hearts to the people we meet and to all the people of the world. . . . Precisely because he is filled with trust in Jesus, the Pope is not discouraged by difficulties and never gets tired of loving everyone.” That much was clear when he came to America. If you know any young children who’d like to get to know the pope better, Joseph and Chico might be a good way to make an introduction.
Father Gordon MacRae, a priest of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, has been in prison for more than twelve years, convicted of a sex-abuse crime that he insists he did not commit. He is sentenced to thirty-three years, and his claim of innocence precludes his being considered for parole.
So, you might think, most prisoners claim they are innocent. True enough, but in this case people of unimpeachable integrity and intelligence have closely examined the matter and believe he is telling the truth. MacRae admits to two earlier instances in which he was guilty of sexual misconduct but not to the charges on which he was convicted. Among those who have critically examined the prosecution is Dorothy Rabinowitz, the Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter of the Wall Street Journal who wrote a two-part exposé of the way in which he was railroaded, with the apparent help of the Manchester diocese and its bishop, John McCormack, a former aide to Cardinal Law of Boston.
Now the friends of Father MacRae have created a website, GordonMacRae.net, which provides a comprehensive narrative of the case, along with pertinent documentation. It makes for engrossing reading and will arouse a sense of outrage among all but the morally somnolent. The website also suggests how people can help Father MacRae in his quest for justice, which is a long shot but not hopeless.
A recent report in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz quotes Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone to the effect that the Church might remove a prayer for the conversion of the Jews from the newly revived Latin liturgy for Easter. Many Jewish religious authorities rankle at the prayer, which caused some static in the background of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to a Manhattan synagogue on the eve of Passover. Jews would be better advised to urge the Catholic Church to leave the prayer precisely as it is.
It seems inappropriate for the Jews to ask Christians to stop praying for their conversion, for converting themselves and others is what Christians do. Why don’t Catholics also pray for the conversion of the Muslims? The answer is self-evident from the text of the supposedly offending prayer:
Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men. (Let us pray. Kneel. Rise.) Almighty and eternal God, who want that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fulness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
The prayer is not for the conversion of the Jews as individuals, but rather for the salvation of “all Israel.” In this prayer, Church declares that “all Israel” consists of the Jews — the Israel of the flesh — as well as the Israel of the spirit, that is, the Church as the People of God. It is consistent with Pope John Paul II’s declaration that the Old Covenant never has been revoked, a position reiterated by Benedict XVI. Catholics therefore pray for “all Israel” to become one and to be saved together.
The reason that the Church does not specifically pray for God to illumine the hearts of Muslims (for example) is that it Muslims do not comprise part of the family of Israel. Nor, for that matter, does the Church specifically pray for Hindus, Buddhists, or Zoroastrians. That the Church desires to convert all of humankind goes without saying; what it needs to say, through the Easter prayer, is that it hopes for the healing of the rift within the family of Israel itself. Thus it affirms precisely what the Jews ask of the Christian world, namely that it recognize their unique status as God’s people.
Christians also might observe that the Jews pray for the conversion of all the peoples of the world, not just once a year but three times a day. Every Jewish service for the past 1,700 years has ended with the recitation of “Aleinu,” which calls on the whole world to acknowledge YHWH by His Name:
Therefore we put our hope in You, Hashem our God, that we may soon see Your mighty splendor, to remove detestable idolatry from the earth, and false gods will be utterly cut off, to perfect the universe through the Almighty’s sovereignty. Then all humanity will call upon Your Name, to turn all the earth’s wicked toward You. All the world’s inhabitants will recognize and know that to You every knee should bend, every tongue should swear. (Isaiah 45:23) Before You, Hashem, our God, they will bend every knee and cast themselves down and to the glory of Your Name they will render homage, and they will all accept upon themselves the yoke of Your kingship that You may reign over them soon and eternally. For the kingdom is Yours and You will reign for all eternity in glory as it is written in your Torah: Hashem shall reign for all eternity. (Exodus 15:18) And it is said: Hashem will be King over all the world—on that day Hashem will be One and His Name will be One. (Zechariah 14:9)
It is right and proper for the Jews to desire that all the world should worship YHWH in their way, and inconsistent of them to object to the same desire on the part of Christians. But the critical point is that the dispute over the Easter prayer is a quarrel within Israel. Jews should worry only if and when Christians cease to pray for them, for that would signify that Christians had forgotten the root onto which the wild olive branches are grafted.
Wheaton College, where I teach, does many wonderful things that go unnoticed by the world; we seem to draw a great deal of attention only when our administration lets a faculty member go. A few years ago, the dismissal of my friend Joshua Hochschild upon his embrace of Catholicism created quite a little stir, about which I commented in the pages of First Things. And now my colleague of twenty years, Kent Gramm, is leaving Wheaton in the wake of his divorce, which a Google News search will tell you all about.
Well, maybe not all about. Russell Goldman’s moronic story on ABC news is chiefly concerned to pursue the question of whether Wheaton might start forcing its faculty into arranged marriages—a wonderful example of the old practice of creating imaginary worlds so you can place people you don’t like there and make them be really, really evil. (The version of the story now online is corrected in a few ways, though still littered with errors—the previous one was submoronic.)
Before I say anything else, I want to say that Kent has been a fine colleague and a truly outstanding teacher, especially of creative writing. He is also a beautiful writer and a thoughtful, meditative cultural critic, and it is hard to imagine that we in the English department will be able to find an adequate replacement for him anytime soon.
Beyond that, here are the facts. Kent wasn’t fired for getting a divorce, as so many of the headlines say. Though Wheaton, in keeping with what it believes (and I believe) to be historic Christian teaching, sees divorce as a very bad thing, indeed often tragic, it does not fire people for getting divorced. We have a number of faculty who have been divorced while employed here; in the past dozen years or more, only one has been asked to leave. But the college authorities do ask to interview employees who are getting divorced in order to understand the circumstances. It was this interview that Kent declined to accept, and that’s where things unraveled.
Does such an institutional interest in employees’ personal lives strike you as an unwarranted invasion of privacy? People, you don’t know the half of it. You can’t get a job teaching here without letters of testimony to your Christian character and commitment to church life, at least one of them from your pastor. In interviews with the faculty personnel committee, the administration, and the department you want to teach in you have to be willing to answer all sorts of questions about your theological views, your spiritual values, your devotional commitments—as well as about your research and teaching. Every year I fill out a Faculty Activity Report in which I list not only my books and articles but also my activities in church and any charitable services to my community. It’s not possible to teach at Wheaton without giving up a great deal of what most people call their privacy.
But how can this be justified? Only because Wheaton asks its faculty not just to teach our students but also to be mentors for them and models—flawed models, deeply flawed in my case, but models all the same—of the Christian life. Indeed, that’s one of the chief ways in which the Wheaton experience is supposed to be distinct from other forms of higher education. By taking on this mentoring and modeling as an intrinsic part of our job, we agree to be evaluated on these grounds. And that can’t be done unless we open ourselves to the kind of scrutiny—by our students as well as by our peers and our administrative leaders—that, frankly, violates our privacy. We give up some of that privacy for the sake of Christian community—for the sake of the difficult task of helping to shape the whole lives (spiritual as well as intellectual) of young Christians.
Some, yes—but does it have to go so far? Is it reasonable for the college to inquire so deeply into the failure of a marriage, something so deeply personal and (in most cases) inscrutable to outsiders? As Kent has commented, with considerable justification, the situation seems to invite the faculty member to blame his spouse in order to keep his job. And in any case, what relevance could that divorce possibly have to one’s work as a teacher?
The answer to that last question is, alas, “It depends.” I know nothing whatsoever about Kent’s situation, but cannot imagine that any of the following scenarios apply in his case, so these are mere thought experiments, focusing on extreme possibilities.
(1) I am getting a divorce because my wife has fallen in love with another man and is leaving me.
(2) I am getting a divorce because my wife, exhausted after years of being verbally and sometimes physically abused by me, is leaving me.
(3) I am getting a divorce because I have fallen in love with another woman, a recent student of mine as it happens, and wish to leave my wife and marry this other woman.
Would any of these circumstances affect my ability to teach English literature to my students? Almost certainly not. But at Wheaton, I have those other responsibilities I mentioned, the “mentoring and modeling” with which I have been entrusted. And in light of those obligations, it seems to me that scenario (3) would disqualify me, scenario (1) would not, and scenario (2) might or might not, depending on how I respond to what has happened to me. A man who repents and grieves over his abuse of his wife, who understands that he is reaping what he has sown, could over the long term minister more deeply and significantly to his students than someone who had not so sinned and so suffered; but a man who refused to acknowledge his fault and filled himself with self-justification could be unworthy of the college’s (and his students’) trust.
But the only way these matters could be worked out is through long and difficult conversations between the person suffering through divorce and the college leadership—and this is what Kent Gramm chose not to do. Frankly, I don’t blame him one bit. I very well might make the same choice were I in his situation, though, then again, I might not have the courage: he knew what the employee handbook said and so resigned, even though he loves teaching his students here and doesn’t have another job on the horizon. (He has asked us to keep an eye out for him the next time we’re in Wal-Mart.) I wonder if, faced with the same situation, I wouldn’t have just blamed my spouse in order to keep my job and therefore some stability in my life. What Kent did is honorable and even brave.
But I also don’t think the college authorities could have done anything other than what they did, and not just because it’s impossible to ignore, for the sake of one situation, the existing rules that everyone has signed on to. If Wheaton is going to ask its faculty to be mentors and models of the Christian life—this quasi-pastoral role—then it has to be able to evaluate, in some way, our faithfulness in carrying out that responsibility. I must admit, I find this a little scary: Will I be judged fairly? Will I be falsely accused of some sin of commission or omission? (Or, perhaps worse, will I be truly accused?) And let’s admit it: Wheaton’s administration is made up of fallible people who can make mistakes in these matters, and perhaps have made them in the past. So these matters are complex, delicate, and worrisome.
But what’s the alternative to engaging in such difficult negotiations? For the college to say, “We expect our faculty to be sound spiritual mentors for our students, but we leave it to them to tell us whether they have successfully carried out this task”? That would be both irresponsible and an invitation to lawsuits from unhappy ex-students. For the college to say, “We ask our faculty to teach their classes and do their research in ways that avoid heresy, but to have no further role in their students’ lives”? Well, that would certainly simplify my life and give me more time to write—but it would also take away one of the chief joys of teaching here, and many of our students would find the Wheaton experience less attractive and meaningful.
The current system leaves me lamenting the loss of a colleague, my students grieving the loss of a beloved teacher, and Kent cut loose from a significant part of his work and from people he cares for. When I count the cost in this way, I am dismayed, and I can’t help but wonder whether there’s not a better and less threatening way to implement the community’s standards of commitment. But I don’t think Wheaton would be improved by a wholesale rejection of its current communal bonds and their replacement by a strict and simplistic division of “public” and “private” worlds. That would alter the character of this institution far more than, say, the admission of Catholics to the faculty. But let’s not go down that path again, at least not today . . .
Postscript: Wheaton’s president, Duane Litfin, has just posted a Q&A on the college’s policies regarding divorce here.
Iranian media have hailed the April 30 meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and Iranian clergy as a propaganda victory for the Islamic Republic. The meeting was the sixth in a regular series of encounters between Iranian clergy and the Holy See. The Iranian news agency carried the following item today:
TEHRAN, May 02 (ISNA) — Spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI in a meeting with Iran’s delegation to Vatican called for utmost cultural and religious cooperation between the two sides.
He regarding faith and reason discussed in the recent dialogues between Islam and Roman Catholic Church said “Faith and reason are the two things that the world needs them today more than any other time and this is our duty to provide this need for the society.”
He also appreciated Iranian delegation for its present “Holy Quran” calling it a precious book.
Head of Iran’s Islamic culture and relations organization Mahdi Mostafavi responded Iran is ready to expand cultural and religious cooperation with Vatican. [sic]
The message the Vatican intended to send to Tehran, however, seems quite different. Among the eight Catholic representatives at the meeting was Prof. Vittorio Possenti of the University of Venice, a signator of a 2005 open letter denouncing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what it called his “crazy anti-Semitic declarations” against the State of Israel. The open letter and an associated demonstration against the Iranian embassy were organized by a group that included Magdi Allam, whom the pope received into the Church at the Easter Vigil.
The Catholic and Iranian sides published seven points of agreement in the May 1 Osservatore Romano, on the subject of faith and reason. They are (in my translation):
(1) Faith and reason are both God’s gifts to humanity.
(2) Faith and reason do not contradict each other; although faith can in some cases be above reason, it never can be against it.
(3) Faith and reason are intrinsically nonviolent. Neither reason nor faith should be used for violence; nonetheless, at times, both have been ill-used to perpetrate violence. In any case, these events cannot place reason or faith in doubt.
(4) Both of the parties agree to cooperate in furthering authentic religiosity, and in particular spirituality, to promote respect for sacred symbols and moral values.
(5) Christians and Muslims should proceed from tolerance, recognizing differences, remaining aware of things they have in common, and giving thanks for these to God. They are called to reciprocal respect, that is, to condemning derision of religious creeds.
(6) Generalizations should be avoided when speaking of religion. The differences between the confessions within Christianity and Islam as well as the differences in historical context are both important factors to be taken into consideration.
(7) Religious traditions cannot be judged on the basis of a single verse or passage in their respective sacred texts. A holistic vision and an adequate hermeneutic method are necessary for their correct comprehension.
The declaration is unexceptionable in itself, but it is troubling that the Holy See gave the Iranian side the opportunity to aver principles on paper that it desecrates in practice. The Islamic Republic routinely supports terrorism to further its agenda. In 2005, Argentine prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for eight serving and former Iranian officials, including former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, for plotting a 1994 bombing that killed 85 and wounded 300 at a Jewish center in Buenos Aires.
According to Catholic World News, Iran hopes that the Vatican will help it counter American and European pressure:
Tehran, Apr. 29, 2008 (CWNews.com) — L’Osservatore Romano has cited the words of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, praising the Holy See for its diplomatic efforts.
During an April 6 meeting with the new papal nuncio in Iran, Archbishop Jean-Paul Gobel, Ahmadinejad said that the Vatican has been a positive force for justice, peace, and the protection of human rights around the world, L’Osservatore reported. Iran has been maneuvering to secure the support of the Holy See to counteract hostile pressure from the US and European nations. In 2005, Argentine prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for eight serving and former Iranian officials, including former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, for plotting a 1994 bombing that killed 85 and wounded 300 at a Jewish center in Buenos Aires.
Although the private message the Holy See delivered to Iran was quite different, it is hard to dispute the Iranian claim of a propaganda victory. In his September 2006 Regensburg address and subsequent statements, Benedict XVI has challenged Islam with the assertion that faith must be supported by reason. The Iranian mullahs affixed their signatures to this proposition without a second thought. That is the Catch-22 of debating with unreasonable people, for the least reasonable people, in the extreme case clinical paranoids, are most persuaded that they are, in fact, very reasonable indeed.
A knock-off on “Stuff White People Like” but this is pretty funny: http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/
Some highlights:
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/04/189-gdtr.html
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/04/187-leaving-room-for-holy-spirit-when.html
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/04/106-side-hug.html
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/03/96-using-gods-favorite-word.html
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/04/185-you-down-with-opp-whoops-i-meant.html
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/04/169-clapping-our-hands-step-by-step.html
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/04/116-using-let-me-pray-about-it-as.html
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/04/143-getting-your-kids-beat-up.html
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/04/130-praying-at-people.html
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/04/119-saying-in-christian-love-before-you.html
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/04/101-letting-anyone-play-music.html
Fr. George Rutler is quite emphatic about it: We are not basking in the afterglow of the papal visit, we are basking in the pre-glow of it’s far-reaching impact. Benedict’s central message, that Christ is indeed our Hope, is just beginning to kindle in our Church and society. The flood of interest in the priesthood is just one example of that preglow. Here’s another glance:
In a survey conducted last week by the Knights of Columbus and Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, nearly half of the respondents say they better understand and appreciate Catholic teaching as a result of the papal visit, and 65 percent of American adults have a more favorable view of Pope Benedict. About 30 percent say they are more likely to participate in their churches and communities, and 40 percent are inspired by the pope to renew their focus on family and morality. In short, Pope Benedict has reminded us that we encounter Christ “through the joys and the trials of ordinary, everyday life”; we encounter him in “letting go of self and . . . [being] drawn into Christ’s very being for others.”
Mystical levitation is bestowed on a few, but most of us are called to gaze at Christ’s face with our feet firmly on the ground. It is the challenge of balancing contemplation and action–looking up and looking out–which the disciples faced after Christ’s Ascension: Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? As usual, Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict has walked this path before:
You are surely familiar with all those precious, naive images in which only the feet of Jesus are visible, sticking out of the cloud, at the heads of the apostles. The cloud, for its part, is a dark circle on the perimeter; on the inside, however, blazing light. It occurs to me that precisely in the apparent naivete of this representation something very deep comes into view. All we see of Christ in the time of history are his feet and the cloud. His feet—what are they? We are reminded, first of all, of a peculiar sentence from the Resurrection account in Matthew’s Gospel, where it is said that the women held onto the feet of the Risen Lord and worshipped him. As the Risen One, he towers over earthly proportions. We can still only touch his feet; and we touch them in adoration. Here we could reflect that we come as worshippers, following his trail, close to his footsteps. Praying, we go to him; praying, we touch him, even if in this world, so to speak, always only from below, only from afar, always only on the trail of his earthly steps. At the same time it becomes clear that we do not find the footprints of Christ when we look only below, when we measure only footprints and want to subsume faith in the obvious. The Lord is movement toward above, and only in moving ourselves, in looking up and ascending, do we recognize him. When we read the Church Fathers something important is added. The correct ascent of man occurs precisely where he learns, in humbly turning toward his neighbor, to bow very deeply, down to his feet, down to the gesture of the washing of feet. It is precisely humility, which can bow low, that carries man upward. This is the dynamic of ascent that the feast of the Ascension wants to teach us.
(cf. Images of Hope
“Quem queris? Whom do you seek?” No words pierce more deeply than those of Christ, spoken personally and uniquely to each soul, but in our noisy streets and noisy minds, it’s easy not to hear or notice. It is not as though Christ climbs a stage amid flag-waving fanfare, picks up a microphone, and calls to us in a rich, sonorous voice. It’s not as though his speech is projected on a jumbo-tron and recorded on YouTube. Christ may not directly address us this way–but, as the participants at the recent St. Jospeph’s Seminary youth rally know, Pope Benedict XVI does:
Have courage! You too can make your life a gift of self for the love of the Lord Jesus and, in him, of every member of the human family. Friends, again I ask you, what about today? What are you seeking? What is God whispering to you? The hope which never disappoints is Jesus Christ. The saints show us the selfless love of his way. As disciples of Christ, their extraordinary journeys unfolded within the community of hope, which is the Church. It is from within the Church that you too will find the courage and support to walk the way of the Lord. Nourished by personal prayer, prompted in silence, shaped by the Church’s liturgy, you will discover the particular vocation God has for you. Embrace it with joy. You are Christ’s disciples today. Shine his light upon this great city and beyond.
The youth–some twenty-five thousand students, young professionals, seminarians, and religious–crowded around the electric-blue stage in rapt attention. “Have we perhaps lost something of the art of listening?” the pope asked, and no doubt the answer is yes. But that afternoon, no matter about claustrophobic crowds and beating sun and a five-hours’ wait. They were listening, and listening eagerly. “Do you leave space to hear God’s whisper, calling you forth into goodness?” the pope gently prodded. “What about today?”
What indeed about today? Judging from the response Fr. Luke Sweeney, Vocations Director for the New York Archdiocese, has received, the pope’s message has had rapid effect. As the New York Daily News reported, within just three days he’d received dozens of queries and application requests, a seminarian tsunami after an unprecedented drought:
For the first time in 108 years, St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers was preparing for a year with no new students. But, after the Holy Father’s whirlwind city tour, dozens have heard the call. “It’s been like a tsunami, a good tsunami of interest,” said the archdiocese’s vocations director, the Rev. Luke Sweeney. “I’ve been meeting people all week and have a lot of e-mails I haven’t had the chance yet to respond to. It has been incredible. . . . One said he came, saw the crowd, heard what the Pope said and then called us,” said Sweeney. “He said his questions and concerns were answered when he heard him speak.”
“The world needs heroes,” Fr. Sweeney tells young men; “You have to be a real man if you want to become a priest.” The response to his challenge–the pope’s challenge–Christ’s challenge–certainly gives the Church reason to hope. Reason to hope, and reason to pray for the future fathers and shepherds of the Faith.
The blogosphere and op/ed pages have been abuzz the past few days discussing Obama and the Catholics, especially after Hilary Clinton took 70% of the Catholic voters in the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary. One of the key issues that has come up again and again has been abortion, on the assumption that abortion is a Catholic issue.
Well. What about Obama and the atheists—-the pro-life atheists? Consider the recent Washington Times op/ed (which has gone surprisingly unnoticed in the blogosphere) by Nat Hentoff (who, you’ll remember, wrote for us on the 2008 election here).
Here’s a taste of the Hentoff column:
My initial inclination to support Sen. Barack Obama’s road to the White House came from his work as a Chicago community organizer and his record in the Illinois legislature. He actually worked to rescue school dropouts from a lifetime dead end as well as provide job training for the unemployed. Later, in the Illinois state Senate, he was able to get a law passed requiring police to electronically record interrogations and confessions in homicide cases. But my view of him changed as I learned his record on abortion.
I am a nonreligious pro-lifer, my only religion being the Constitution. And I am not a single-issue voter, having often supported candidates who are pro-choice because I knew their civil liberties and civil-rights records. For one example, I was a great admirer of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. (New York, where I live, has had no senators of his quality and principles since.) Although Mr. Moynihan was pro-abortion, he strongly opposed partial-birth abortion, which he described as “only minutes away from infanticide,” since the fetus (whom I regard as a human being) was already clearly among us.
I oppose extremists on all sides of issues, having, for instance, argued for hours with and against some so-called pro-lifers who considered part of their mission to commit violence, even homicide, where abortions were performed.
I admire much of Mr. Obama’s record, including what he wrote in “The Audacity of Hope” about the Founders’ “rejection of all forms of absolute authority, whether the king, the theocrat, the general, the oligarch, the dictator, the majority… George Washington declined the crown because of this impulse.” But on abortion, Mr. Obama is an extremist. He has opposed the Supreme Court decision that finally upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act against that form of infanticide. Most startlingly, for a professed humanist, Mr. Obama in the Illinois Senate also voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I have reported on several of those cases, when, before the abortion was completed, an alive infant was suddenly in the room. It was disposed of as a horrified nurse who was not necessarily pro-life followed the doctors’ orders to put the baby in a pail or otherwise get rid of the child. (emphasis added)
Nathaniel, at least Coolio had the good sense of keeping some of the original phrasing—No, “And even though I walk through the Hood of death,” here.
From the 1995 movie “Dangerous Minds”:
Today a friend pointed me toward The Hip Hop Prayerbook, designed by an Episcopal church in the South Bronx as “a powerful evangelism tool” designed to offer “a means to worship that will draw in the young and speak to those not generally spoken to by the Church.” I have no doubt that these folks have the best of intentions and I have no idea how effective their hip hop Eucharists are, but take a look at the adaptation of Psalm 23.
The Lord is all that, I need for nothing.
He allows me to chill.
He keeps me from being heated
and allows me to breathe easy.
He guides my life so that
I can represent and give
shouts out in his Name.
And even though I walk through
the Hood of death,
I don’t back down
for you have my back.
The fact that you have me covered
allows me to chill.
He provides me with back-up
in front of my player-haters
and I know that I am a baller
and life will be phat.
I fall back in the Lord’s crib
for the rest of my life.
To me, this screams of a white guy trying so hard to reach out to inner city youth, but not realizing that no one actually says “I know that I am a baller and life will be phat.” A Village Voice article on the HipHopEMass in which Psalms like this appear only confirms these suspicions. Furthermore, if you go to a black Baptist church, you’re probably not going to hear a hip hop translation of the Psalms; “He provides me with back-up in front of my player-haters” will be rendered in the original King James English.
The book’s website offers a quotation from the Rt. Rev. Catherine Roskam, who notes that “If Jesus walked the earth today, he would be a rapper.” Perhaps. But if he were a rapper, I’m guessing he’d sound a little more like Fr. Stan Fortuna (see below) and less like someone falling “back in the Lord’s crib.”
Bob Novak chastised the archbishops of Washington and New York in his Washington Post column today. Novak argued that the bishops invited pro-abort politicians to attend the Papal Mass, which implicitly included a welcome to the communion rail. And in doing so they had subverted Benedict’s teachings.
Turns out, out least in the case of New York’s Cardinal Egan, that this isn’t the case. And for those who have been critical of Egan’s lack of public repudiation of pro-abortion Catholic politicians, this statement may provide some helpful context. Egan has gone about things with Guiliani in private, in a primarily pastoral, not political, vein. And so, while Mayor of New York, Guilliani was asked not to receive communion. Egan assumed that understanding would continue at the Papal Mass.
Egan released the following today:
“The Catholic Church clearly teaches that abortion is a grave offense against the will of God. Throughout my years as Archbishop of New York, I have repeated this teaching in sermons, articles, addresses, and interviews without hesitation or compromise of any kind. Thus it was that I had an understanding with Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, when I became Archbishop of New York and he was serving as Mayor of New York, that he was not to receive the Eucharist because of his well-known support of abortion. I deeply regret that Mr. Giuliani received the Eucharist during the Papal visit here in New York, and I will be seeking a meeting with him to insist that he abide by our understanding.”
One of the groups that performed for Benedict XVI in DC sent us their promotional material and some free CDs, and I was intrigued the moment I saw their name. The Suspicious Cheese Lords is an all-male a cappella group from DC, where they sing and record early music, more specifically, Renaissance music, and even more specifically, Renaissance music from composers we’ve barely (or never) heard of. Their three recordings are all world premieres, and feature the works of Elzéar Genet (Carpentras), Ludwig Senfl, and Jean Mouton. It’s not unusual for a composer like these to have a motet or two sung at a concert, but not an entire CD of their music alone. Having listened to them, it’s a good thing that now we have CDs of these musicians’ works, especially ones with the Lords’ solid singing and helpful liner notes.
The Lords are not on the level of the kings of contemporary early music performers, but they make for good, well, lords. Their basses and baritones are particularly well-blended, and Senfl’s Te Deum highlighted this with its rich energy. If you’re interested in early music at all, check out the Lords on their website or listen to some of their recordings here.
Oh, and if you were wondering why they call themselves the Suspicious Cheese Lords, their website provides an explanation:
The Suspicious Cheese Lords’ name is derived from the title of a Thomas Tallis motet, Suscipe quæso Domine. While “translating” the title, it was observed that Suscipe could be “suspicious,” quæso is close to the Spanish word queso meaning “cheese,” and Domine is, of course, “Lord.” Hence, the title of the motet was clearly “Suspicious Cheese Lord”—which in time became adopted as the group’s name. Although their name is humorous, the group appreciates the literal translation of Suscipe Quæso Domine, which is, “Take, I ask, Lord.” Suspiciously, the Cheese Lords have yet to perform this motet.
In today’s St. Louis Platform there’s an excellent article with interviews from two of the victims of clerical sexual abuse who met with the pope in Washington, DC. Here are some excerpts, but the whole thing is worth reading:
Olan Horne, 48, a survivor of clerical sex abuse, believes that Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States marks a turning point in the way victims of sexual abuse are treated in the Catholic Church.
“I saw it in his face, heard his voice. He understands,” said Horne, one of six survivors who met Thursday with the pope. He spoke with the St. Louis Beacon from his Massachusetts university food service office. . . .
“Benedict told the bishops to meet with survivors as he had; this pope gets it,” said Horne. “I like to say that I’m from Missouri and you are going to have to Show Me. Benedict showed me.” . . .
A woman on the Boston archdiocesan victims’ assistance staff handed the pope a book with 1,600 first names written on its pages. Cardinal Sean O’Malley explained to the pope that the list was of all victims of clerical sexual abuse in the Boston archdiocese who had asked its bishops for pastoral care. Pages were left blank to symbolize those victims who had never voiced their tragic complaints, O’Malley explained.
“The pope was shocked at the number,” Horne said. “You could see the sincerity of the shock on his face. Benedict had never known that there was that many in Boston. He was stunned. So was the Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Pietro Sambi. That was a moment. They do have a tough role.”
The exciting news of the the day does not come from Pennsylvania, but from Rome, where it was announced that John Henry Cardinal Newman will be beatified. A leader of the Oxford Movement, a catholic reform movement in the Anglican Church, Newman later converted to Catholicism and founded the Birmingham Oratory. He is seen by most Anglican converts to Catholicism as a spiritual forebear, and his writings, especially his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, have helped bring many across the Tiber. Those interested in reading his works can consult this website or Google Books.
Via the Catholic News Agency
In October, I wrote about dying languages–languages whose use is declining–and why they are worth saving. In today’s New York Times, there was a small article on Syrian villages where Aramaic, the language probably spoken by Jesus, is still used, but by increasingly fewer people. Part of it is the usual story of children not learning the language of their parents, but another part is due to the general decline of Christianity in the Middle East. If you’re interested in matters linguistic, give the article a read.
That’s the title of a recent article in MercatorNet by Maggie Gallagher. Gallagher, the President of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, is quite simply the most effective spokesperson making public arguments in defense of marriage today. Not surprisingly, she’s also a First Things contributor.
In her article, Gallagher describes a new report she has just released:
A new analysis carried out by myself and Joshua Baker entitled Pope Benedict XVI on Marriage: A Compendium and published by the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy on the eve of Benedict’s historic U.S. visit, finds that in less than three years of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI has spoken publicly about marriage on 111 occasions. His pronouncements connect marriage to such overarching themes as human rights, world peace, and the conversation between faith and reason.
Over and over again he has made it clear that the marriage and family debate is central — not peripheral — to understanding the human person, and defending our human dignity.
Her short article and the report are well worth reading.
A sensible word from the Wall Street Journal on the Pope and how his celebration of immigration is the right and Christian thing to do, in contrast to virulent rumblings from the some corners of the American political scene:
“You know the restrictionists have gone head-first into the fever swamps when they denounce a Christian religious leader for sounding like a Christian. The pope welcomes immigrants because he’s Catholic, not because they are. He isn’t ‘marketing’ his faith. He’s practicing it.”
