Jody Bottum referred to the old story of the Holy Cross alumni magazine that showed an FBI agent leading away in handcuffs a priest at an anti-Vietnam protest—with both identified by their graduation years from the school.

He treated the story as possibly apocryphal, but it is, in fact, true. Memory fades, but I knew the editor of this magazine at the time, a Jesuit whose name escapes me. The issue featured a story on the Berrigans, headlined on the cover “The Burden of the Berrigans.” The photo in question was of an FBI agent escorting Philip Berrigan away, in handcuffs, with, indeed, their class identities in the caption.

The editor offered to give me extra copies for my students, which I accepted, because of interest at the height of the anti-Vietnam-war movement. The box was too heavy to mail, and he proposed that I meet him at a Holy Cross alumni event in Holyoke (near my home).

So I went, to find a room full of men (Holy Cross wasn’t yet coed) well on their way to inebriation. I retreated to the corridor and was relieved to find a Jesuit collar with a familiar face above it headed my way. He told me how much he hated these events, then led me out to the parking lot. We moved our cars to a dark corner and transferred the box of magazines, like contraband, and I took the magazines back and gave them out to any students who wanted one. Everyone found that photo wryly funny, of course.

A good line from Megan McArdle of The Atlantic Monthly regarding a piece in the New York Times which quotes people happy about the potential decline of New York’s real estate market:

This is perhaps why I have so little sympathy for the princes of schadenfreude in this New York Times article, who are hoping that Wall Street will collapse, allowing them to buy Manhattan apartments. Bizarrely, despite the fact that all of them seem to work in some service associated with the finance industry, they seem entirely unaware that if the financial industry in New York collapses, their employers will suffer the same fate. They also seem not to realize that it is the taxes from the banking industry (and its lavish, ridiculous bonuses) that finance Manhattan’s low crime rate and excellent public services. Not to mention the restaurants, theaters, and so forth that make them want to live in Manhattan in the first place.

If they wanted to live in the New York that I liked–the one with the Dominicans hanging out on the street corner, the little hole-in-the-wall pizza joints and the improbable shops with ancient leases that sold scavenged junk alongside ticky-tack imports–well then, I could understand their celebration. But they want to live in the New York that the bankers created without the bankers. This is like wanting to go to heaven, but not wanting to die.

The full piece is here.

This, ladies and gentlemen, could be the Official Papal Skateboard.

I wish I could just leave it at that, but you probably want to know exactly how the papacy will, after 2,000 years, finally get its own board. Some time last week, I saw that the Archdiocese of New York was having a contest for youth to design the Papal Skateboard, which would be presented to Benedict at the youth rally at St. Joseph’s Seminary during his April visit to the US. The National Catholic Register shows this submission from a 14-year-old New Yorker, with its impressive rendering of the keys and tiara. Stay tuned for further updates on the winner of the competition, and the liturgical incorporation of the skateboard at the rally.

Via The Shrine of the Holy Whapping

Vatican City. Or so says this survey. Of course it’s easy to prosper when the only way you can lose your job is to die and your number one export is infallibility. Try competing with that!

Interesting that two independent states within Italy rank in the top 10, but Italy itself ranks only 27th. Does that mean that if each province declared independence, it would prosper and become more stable? Don’t give the Italians any ideas…

The United States ranks a mere 23rd. I assume that poor showing has something to do with the recent trashing of HD-DVD for Blue-ray technology. Who can remain “stable” when every five seconds you have to go out and buy yet another machine on which to play yet another iteration of St. Elmo’s Fire?

Most of the “winners” on this list are barely countries at all. Andorra? Liechtenstein? I’m sure they are lovely places, filled with wonderful, God-fearing, child-loving, environmentally friendly, fur-hating people. But if your idea of national defense is a guy with a bright orange sash yelling, “Nothing to see here! Move along! Mo-o-o-ve along!” then maybe we should consider calling you something else. Like Schenectady.