Please Bear with Me...

My apologies to friends who might be stopping by here lately looking for some new content and aren't finding much.

I've been pretty busy lately with some major implementations at work, some RFP responses, and of course, Summer family stuff...

I do confess, however, to a bit of blogging fatigue. I'm not crazy about the news right now on any front - political, ecclesiastical, economical, vocational, educational, ecological, or otherwise.

I'm taking stock a little bit in where I want to go with this thing, after a little over two years of blogging. If I can't get it said in two years, I probably can't get it said, period.

Bear with me though, I'll be around in some fashion.

A Measure of Redemption

It doesn't make up for the Patriots, but we'll take it...



It's a dictum that holds true for all sports...

Defense Wins Championships!

The Patriots may have said that last year too, but they were whistling past the graveyard when they said it, as their defense was aging rapidly on them.

Then again, how much more would the rest of the country have hated this town if the Patriots had managed to get it done too? Is it possible to hate us any more?

Defense wins championships... It makes me less uneasy with another iron law:

Money buys championships.

But that's a subject for another day.

As with the Red Sox last fall, I'd be remiss in not giving credit where credit is due, even though I haven't been following the Celtics avidly. To tell the truth, I'm not much of an NBA fan anymore, although it really was nice seeing them demolish the Lakers, especially in that last game. It kind of got the juices flowing again.

And speaking of "The Truth", the best thing about this was that Paul Pierce really deserved it. He's been a class act in this town, and seeing him win a championship after all of those years in the wilderness was gratifying.

Disclaimer: This post is in no way meant to rub salt into the wounds of Utah Jazz fans. If, however, you root for anyone else (and you know who you are), y'all can kiss my ...

SWEET SEVENTEEN!

Blues in Wingtips

A completely random post with an Otis Rush Shuffle

Otis, my man... (click on image)



"Oh, the formality!"

May we have a little bit of that back in our society please? Just a little bit? I miss it.

May the Blues live forever. The truest and most honest musical form there is.

Death to Hip-Hop. Death, I say... Death, death, death...

Fr. Andrew Greeley on Pope John XXIII

Smiling down on the crowd, (John XXIII) said: Tornando a casa, troverete i bambini. Date una carezza ai vostri bambini e dite: questa è la carezza del Papa. It means, “When you go home, you’ll find your children. Give them a kiss, and tell them that this kiss comes from the pope.” It summed up the legendary love of the man.

(After the 2005 papal conclave) a L’Unità cartoon showed Benedict XVI at the same window, saying, “Tonight, when you go home, I want you to give your children a spanking, and tell them that this spanking comes from the pope.”
-- John Allen ("Benedict's first year. One year on, he shapes up to be more a consulter than an enforcer, more a teacher than a star")

Excerpts from Andrew Greeley's column this morning, Church needs to revive its stalled reform (He was speaking of his recent visit to the papal tombs):

We were almost swept away by a crowd of Polish pilgrims, singing loudly (and on key) as they marched to the tomb of John Paul II. He is their great folk hero, and their enthusiasm is justified.

Yet I wonder about the other great pope of the end of the 20th century -- Blessed John XXIII. He has been beatified but no one seems greatly concerned about his canonization. Yet in fact, the church has never in recent centuries had a leader who attracted so much positive attention to the church...

Pope John was a reforming pope -- as every pope should be under the dictum Ecclesia Semper Reformanda ("the Church must always be reformed"). The unchanging church could in fact change, fresh winds blew through the arid dicasteries of the Vatican Palace. The church was not afraid of anyone or anything. The pope could dialogue with anyone. He could reopen any question. He could listen to any proposal. He tugged the Council out of the hands of the curia and gave it to the bishops of the world.

It was the most dramatic Catholic era in 1,000 years. We were young and alive, and the church was also young and alive. This old man, filled with the vitality of faith and hope had turned the Church upside down and inside out. Under "Good Pope John" it was impossible to be anti-Catholic.

It was all too good to be true.

One would have thought that he had established a model for a religious leader of all the world -- "A hopeful Holy Man who smiles," I had written. A few more popes like that, popes filled with the hope and love of the Gospel, and the pope would have become de facto the most important religious figure on the planet. Yet he had terrified the men who would succeed him and those who would elect such successors, good men, pious men, sincere men.

Nervous men.

The pope is not an actor, not a comedian, not a joker. He was vicar of Christ, the heir of Peter the fisherman. He had to be serious. He had to defend the deposit of faith from those who were attacking it. Pope John had almost ruined the Church, many of the curialists were whispering. It was time to restore order, clean up the mess and protect the church from those who took Pope John's Council seriously.

As the years went on it became necessary to double-think what the Council had accomplished -- it was more about continuity than about change. It was not a reformation. The church would creep back into its suspicions of the world and become hostile and defensive. You could not fight off those who were opponents of the Church's "teachings about life" by laughter and a ready smile.

Some of the more recently ordained priests claim that they are not Vatican II priests but John Paul priests, a position which, taken seriously, is close to heresy.

The Tablet, an English Catholic publication, said that John Paul II had "aborted the reform." Both popes were saints, one was correct about the "signs of the times" and the other not. The Church still needs reform. Desperately. More than ever.

Provoke Radio: Sister Dorothy Stang

A series on 'Modern Saints and Martyrs'



At one time or another, all of our children have attended a Catholic elementary school that was once run by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, which was founded by Saint Julie Billiart. The school still has an SND sister or two teaching there, and the influence of the order is still strong. The school retains St Julie's motto: "Ah, qu'il est bon, le bon Dieu" ("Ah, How good is the good God").

Crystal once put up a very good post about the late SND Sister Dorothy Stang, who was martyred in Brazil in 2005 for preaching the undiluted Gospel and for standing up for the rights of poor farmers against corrupt loggers and ranchers. One of the accused conspirators in her death was recently acquitted.

In noticed that on Provoke Radio, they have been running a four-part series which includes interviews about (and with) this remarkable and saintly woman.

Listen on Provoke Radio to:

Modern Day Saints and Martyrs: The Life and Death of Sr. Dorothy Stang: Parts I through IV

Excerpts from a John Dear column on NCR: On Feb. 12, 2005, Sr. Dorothy Stang walked along a dirt road deep in the heart of Brazil's Amazon, on her way to meet a handful of poor farmers bearing up under harassment from illegal loggers and ranchers. She trudged along, until two hired assassins blocked her way. In response to their challenge, she produced maps and documents proving that the government had designated the land as a reserve for the landless poor. "Do you have a weapon?" they asked. Yes, she answered, showing them the Bible she carried for decades. She opened it and began to read aloud: "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. Blessed are the peacemakers ..." Then, she said, "God bless you, my sons."

The two shot her six times and ran. Her body lay on the dirt road all day, nearby witnesses later said, because they were afraid they would be shot if they moved it. As it rained, her blood mixed with the dirt...

Anyone who leaves their homeland, spends four decades serving the poorest of the poor in Amazon, and defends the forest -- long before anyone ever thought of an environmental movement -- must possess enormous commitment, faith and vision.

In Dayton, 1931, she was born, one of nine in a lively and devout Catholic family. At 17, she entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, and in 1953 she was sent to serve the poor, teach children, and assist at Most Holy Trinity parish in the desert of Sunnyslope, Ariz. After many good years, she volunteered to join a mission to Brazil, and in 1966 off she went -- later to become a citizen there. In the years before she was killed, she was hailed with honors for her work. She learned the languages and set up remote parishes. Walked the forest and met with the poorest farmers. Set up dozens of base communities and taught them the Gospel. She launched 23 schools and created a structure for the poor to claim their land. A tidy sum of work. The base community movement, liberation theology, the environmental movement -- she brought them forth, like a vineyard from a wasteland, along with the other church workers.

Feisty and energetic and loving, one of the great saints. Surely she'll be canonized one day. To that end she remained faithful to the poor, to the ruined Amazon, and so, to the Gospel and the God of justice and compassion. Beautiful stories come down to us. How she fed the hungry, built community, lived in destitution. How she confronted illegal loggers and corrupt ranchers, the class who stole land from the poor, kept them in misery, and bought off the police, the military and the government. Death threats rained down on Dorothy for years, along with insults and hate mail. Ranchers took aim at the community center for women that she had founded and riddled it with bullets. On one occasion the police arrested her for passing out "subversive" material. It was the United Nations's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Another time, she escaped by a hairs-breadth an attempt on her life.

Yet she carried on and included the ranchers in her prayers for peace. Her defense of the poor was fearless. She did her homework, studied the laws, barged repeatedly into government offices to lodge heated complaints. The poor, she said, were promised land, but here they are being driven off, loggers and ranchers behind it all, and the government turning a blind eye, turning a blind eye, as well, toward the destruction of the forest. She stood fearless even as she witnessed over the years the marriage of powers, commercial interests and the military. Together they threatened and terrorized and forced many of her programs to collapse. But she remained positive and hopeful, virtually always smiling.

"That I've been able to live, love, be loved and work with the Brazilian people, help them find confidence in themselves, to profoundly sense God's presence in their lives and then be a creative influence in society from which a more human society can be born, I thank all of you," she wrote her family and friends on her 60th birthday in 1991. "It's a chain reaction. We can give positive input-energy into life but we need to be charged also. In the midst of all this violence there are many small communities that have learned the secret of life: sharing, solidarity, confidence, equality, pardon, working together. God is present -- generator and sustainer of all life. Thus life is productive and transforming in the midst of all this."

Over the years, Dorothy wore a favorite T-shirt that read: "The death of the forest is the end of our lives." She knew first hand what the destruction of the Amazon meant, not only for Brazil but for the planet... "

"Tell all that we must make great efforts to save our planet. Mother Earth is not able to provide anymore. Her water and air are poisoned and her soil is dying of exaggerated use of chemicals, all in the name of profit. Pray for all of us and for a world where all can live -- plants, animals and humans -- in peace and harmony." In 2002, the death threats intensified. The mayor of the nearby town said, "We have to get rid of that woman if we are going to have peace." A list circulated of people with "bounties" on their heads. Atop the list was her name -- Stang, $20,000.

"I know that they want to kill me," she said, "but I will not go away. My place is here alongside these people who are constantly humiliated by the powerful." Visiting her family and community in Ohio a few months before she was killed, she told one sister, "I just want to sink myself into God." Her absence gave the authorities space to work a different tack. On her return she was met with a trumped-up charge, organizing armed rebellion. This should put her in her place, water down her gumption. And off to trial she went. It was in the middle of it that she died. "I look at Jesus carrying the cross," she said a few days before her death, when asked by a novice about her prayer, "and I ask for the strength to carry the suffering of the people." A day before she died, she said: "If something is going to happen, I hope it happens to me, because the others have families to care for."

At her funeral two thousand people marched. Hundreds of reporters descended from around the world. "Today, we are not going to bury Dorothy. We are going to plant her," her community said. "Dorothy vive!" the crowd returned. Brazil's president announced days later the creation of two new national parks in the rain forest. He declared the expansion of another and placed eight and a half million acres more under environmental protection. And he suspended logging in the most hotly contested areas. Dorothy is rising in her people and in the land.

Recent books written about Dorothy Stang:

Martyr of the Amazon: The Life of Sister Dorothy Stang, by Roseanne Murphy

The Greatest Gift: The Courageous Life and Martyrdom of Sister Dorothy Stang, by Binka Le Breton

See trailer from the South by Southwest Film Festival documentary...

They Killed Sister Dorothy

Grown Men in Tears

High drama indeed… but never shoot it high!!



Last fall my oldest son Brendan finally seemed to have come to terms with the fact that he doesn’t have the size to play organized American football the way he’d like to, and has gotten more serious about his club soccer and in developing his skills in that sport. His brothers play soccer too. Our girls do field hockey, pole-vaulting (how cool is that?) and drama.

The other night, Brendan and I were watching the UEFA European Champions Cup final between Manchester United and Chelsea, which was being played in Moscow. Brendan and his soccer club teammates are all into this sort of thing... Brendan was virtually alone in supporting Man U; almost all of his buddies were rooting for Chelsea. Now, if you ask me why 12-year old soccer-playing boys in the US have such passionate convictions one way or the other about something like this, I really can’t tell you. All I can say is that soccer has become thoroughly internationalized. Neither of these teams can really be called “British” clubs anymore, and I suppose boys have favorite players they’ve seen playing in the World Cup that they want to root for. In the case of Chelsea, I’m thinking that a lot of them are fans of the German midfielder Michael Ballak.

Predictably, the game ended in a draw, and was decided by a penalty kick shootout. I think I’ve posted before about how this is a fundamental flaw in the sport. The rules of the game and the strategies employed by most coaches are weighted too heavily in the favor of the defense. It’s too difficult to score goals, and far too many important games are settled with penalty kicks, which seems unjust to me. If you are a true aficionado of the game, however, there is hardly anything like the high drama of a penalty shootout. Even for the casual observer, it can make the palms sweat.

In most of the world, soccer is more important than a matter of life and death. The pressure on the star players is beyond intense. One thing I’ve noticed in these shootouts is that it's often the best players who choke under the pressure and make mistakes. I’m no expert when it comes to fútbol, but as far as penalty kicks are concerned, the advantage lies with the shooter, and I think the main idea is to keep the ball low and just inside of either post, hoping that the goalie will choose wrong in deciding which direction to dive in. Too often, it seems, the best players try to get cute.

For example, in the Cup final the other night, Man U’s Portuguese winger Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably one of the 2 or 3 best players in the world, tried some lame thing where he did a little stop-and-go before taking the shot. Didn’t work. The goalie made the save. His little move should be illegal. According to the rules, the goalie can’t move until the ball is in the air anyway. Serves him right.

With this advantage it came down to Chelsea’s captain, the defender John Terry, playing just ten days after dislocating an arm, and just minutes after keeping Chelsea in the game with a brilliant defensive header, to take his turn in the box. If he just puts his shot away, it’s all over and Chelsea are champs!

Well… Between a driving rainstorm and bad turf… Watch... About 1:20 in, Chelsea in blue, Manchester United in red.



You’ve got to feel bad for the guy. As for Ronaldo, while the rest of his teammates celebrated, he still lay face down on the turf in tears of his own, no doubt giving thanks to the Madonna… “I’m not the goat, I’m not the goat, I’m not the goat…” Afterwards, though, he didn’t seem too stressed about it. He just looked like he wanted to kill his interviewer, that's all.

Shortly before the shootout, one of Chelsea's best players, Didier Drogba, was given a red card and kicked out of the game for slapping Man U's Nemanja Vidic. This indiscipline under pressure puts me in mind a bit of the great midfielder Zinedine Zidane, who probably cost France the last World Cup by losing his cool, and of a really tough break for the player in 1994’s World Cup who was all the buzz that year, Italy’s striker Roberto Baggio. In the final match with Brazil, he put his penalty kick… over the net. Did he ever live it down? Is there redemption for fallen fútbol heroes?

"Silent Cal" Pipes Up With The 4-Ever Republican Platform

The first presidential film with sound recording, 1924. John McCain may as well give the same speech.



Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, presided over the soaring stock market and great boom years of the Roaring Twenties (1923–1929), and in so doing became quite popular, despite being so notoriously taciturn. When this former Massachusetts governor died in 1933, Dorothy Parker reportedly quipped, "How could they tell?"

"His ideal day is one on which nothing whatever happens.... Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored."
-- H.L. Mencken

"Coolidge's terseness became legendary. He could be 'silent in five languages,' a contemporary asserted. A favorite joke had a pretty young woman approaching the president to explain that she had bet a friend she could make him say more than two words. 'You lose,' Coolidge replied. Alice Roosevelt Longworth said he looked as though he'd been 'weaned on a pickle.'"
-- H.W. Brands

"Coolidge's philosophy is Puritanism de luxe, in which it is possible to praise all the classic virtues while continuing to enjoy all the modern conveniences."
-- Walter Lippman

"The business of America is business."
-- Coolidge

"If you keep dead still, they will run down in three or four minutes. If you even cough or smile they will start up all over again."
-- Coolidge to his successor, Herbert Hoover, on how to deal with visitors to the White House

Taxes, taxes, taxes... Yeah, sure. We all just love paying taxes, don't we? Forget your culture wars, people. Cal was telling you what the Republican Party was about, is about, and will always be about. They still stick to the same old songsheets, even though that stock market bubble collapsed shortly after Cal left office, and the country was plunged into the Great Depression. You'd think that would have been enough to discredit those laissez faire ideas forever, but apparently not. Brush that speech off, and Romney could have slickly packaged it a few months ago, or McCain could stumble through it just as clumsily today.

Yes, they've stuck to their principles. Give them credit for that... I wish the Democratic Party had stuck to theirs.

Someone clever has read between the lines of that speech, btw, and distilled the rest of the GOP platform issues, again, prescient in their relevance for today, like so...



What is that he's reading from? William's chapbook?

For all that Cal said in what he did not say, or for what little he actually said with great reluctance, his greatest bit of folk wisdom might have been what's come to be known as the Coolidge Effect.



The story goes that President and Mrs Coolidge were visiting a government farm in Kentucky one day and after arrival were taken off on separate tours. When Mrs Coolidge passed the chicken pens she paused to ask her guide how often the rooster could be expected to perform his duty. 'Dozens of times a day' was her guide's reply. She was most impressed by this and said, 'Please tell that to the President.'

When the President was duly informed of the rooster's performance he was initially dumbfounded. Then a thought occurred to him. 'Was this with the same hen each time?' he inquired. 'Oh no, Mr President, a different one each time' was his host's reply. The President nodded slowly, smiled and said, ''Tell that to Mrs Coolidge!'

Reports from Chengdu

NPR's Remarkable Chengdu Diary



As the estimate of the death toll from the devastating earthquake in China's Sichuan Province continues to rise, NPR's reporters on the scene - Melissa Block and Robert Siegel - have been covering the story up-close and first-hand in a remarkable series of posts on a blog called Chengdu Diary.



Block and Siegel just happened to be in Chengdu coincidentally when the earthquake struck. They were in the process of putting together segments for the NPR program All Things Considered, describing the incredible pace of change in China today, and focusing on the rapidly growing city of Chengdu because...

Through our coverage, we hope to convey to our audience just how complex a place China is. We want to reflect the enormous changes taking place, and the challenges and the opportunities that they present. While we certainly could have accomplished that in Beijing or Shanghai, it seemed more appropriate to get out to a city that's still in the process of developing...

We solicited ideas from a number of people. We were looking for a place with a vibrant cultural scene, a place with some historical significance, a place where the economy is booming...

We liked that Chengdu is part of a big government effort to "develop the west". We were impressed with the local music and arts scene here, not to mention the teahouse culture. We liked that we could get out to the countryside in less than an hour. We were intrigued by the fact that we'd pass Intel and Motorola offices along the way. We felt welcomed by just about everyone we met. And, I cannot lie, we ate really, really well on that trip.

People here in China seem to think we picked well. A foreign ministry official in Beijing congratulated us on the choice, and said that Chengdu represents China's heartland. "It would be like going to Kansas City," he told us, beaming.

Melissa Block was in the process of interviewing the pastor of a local church when the earthquake struck.

Listen to:

The Earthquake

Dujiangyan Parents' Search for Child

Zipingpu Dam Command Center

I find that there is something incredibly intimate and immediate about radio reporting that television cannot generally match, for some reason... Perhaps to our hearts, hearing means more than seeing than we realize.

The city of Chengdu itself seems to have withstood the quake fairly well. Some of the mountain towns outside of the city, however, have been heavily damaged, and some have virtually disappeared.

The reporters note that the residents seem to credit the central Chinese government with responding to the crisis fairly well, but are filled with anger towards local officials, especially in light of some evidence that government building were built well enough to withstand the quake, but that shoddy construction was used in buildings such as the Middle School that collapsed in Juyuan. Accusations of corruption abound.

The reporters are also finding that although they have been treated well by the population at large so far, there is some increasing distrust as well, as some residents resent others openly criticizing the Chinese government to foreign reporters.

Pray for the victims of the recent twin disasters in Asia.

How to donate to charities

I'm Ecumenical II

Patsy Cline - Walkin' After Midnight

Well, to a point I am. Much like my wearing a New York Giants t-shirt, this is probaby something you'll never see on AEV again - A country tune.

Unless Willie Nelson happens to come out with something I really like.

Click on the image...



Poor Patsy Cline. The first female country mega-star. For all her success, hers was kind of a hard-luck life. She survived a horrific car crash, only to perish in a plane crash a couple of years later at the age of 30.

I like this tune, maybe because it's kind of bluesy. I never would have heard of it if it wasn't for the Cowboy Junkies, who did a fine cover on it many years ago.

Patsy wasn't really what you would call a beauty, but there was something erotically charged about her. At least a lot of people thought so at the time.

Now, don't blame me for the portrayal of servile domesticity in this clip. In fact, I really have absolutely no idea what the heck she is doing. Can anyone tell me? Is she in a dress shop or her own kitchen? A fabric store? Wallpaper emporium? Is she wrapping presents? What...?

Ah, the early days of television... It was what it was. Most of the time, it showed a spectacular lack of imagination. Hard to believe how far women have come in society and on television. If you don't believe me, check out this old Maxwell House Coffee ad. It's from a collection of TV clips from the year 1968. "Now you be a good little housewife..."

Salt of the Earth... Working to Make Capital Punishment a Thing of the Past

"Whenever a state anywhere in the world bans or declares a moratorium on capital punishment, Rome’s Colosseum is lit up, and Catholic groups are always in the front row among those rejoicing." - John Allen

Anne and I went to Italy on our honeymoon in 1992. On thing I noticed wherever we went, from Rome to Florence, Assisi, Modena, Venice, Milan... Billboard posters advertising a traveling exhibit going around the country on the history and methods of torture. It was a curious thing. It showed a European sensitivity to an issue I hadn't given much thought to. It all seemed so remote and far in the past. Fast forward to this decade...

As I’ve noted previously, despite being constantly berated by the hierarchy for their supposed lack of faith, their lack of appreciation for their roots, and for their relativism, it seems to me that the nations of Europe, and in some high-profile cases the Latin nations of Europe in particular, are displaying their strong commitment to some of the very finest examples of Catholic social teaching, impervious to the harangues constantly levelled against their societies from the Vatican. I posted about this last year in regard to the Spanish commitment to nonviolence. Two weeks ago, I happened to notice that John Allen had written about Italy and their campaign to end capital punishment worldwide – What abortion is to American Catholics, the death penalty is for Italians.

Whether this commitment and this activism stems from their “latent” Christianity, or whether it comes from more vague forms of post-modern enlightenment values, I can’t really say. I think Europeans are in sort of a unique position among the peoples of the world’s various continents, in that they have tried and tested just about every absolutist type of ideology that has ever existed, and have learned the rough lessons to be learned from each the hard way. All I can point out is that the Community of Sant'Egidio, the lay movement I admire the most out of all of those that arose in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, has been at the forefront on the issue of capital punishment, spearheading the effort.

I think this campaign is crucial because it offers a challenge and a contradiction to:

- The United States, ever-influential worldwide, which if I am not mistaken is the only Western democracy that still has the death penalty.

- The drive to establish strict interpretations of Islamic Sharia across several nations, which is bringing pressure to bear even upon Europe itself.

- China, which is rapidly on its way to becoming the most powerful country in the world, and whose mixture of totalitarian government and cowboy capitalism may become the model for other developing nations. It lists 60 crimes which are capital offenses.

The Community of Sant'Egidio has not only fought to put an end to capital punishment, it has also worked to sponsor peaceful resolutions to conflicts, including a cease-fire they once brokered in Mozambique. Here is the the "Method" of Sant'Egidio explained.

Here are excerpts from John Allen’s article:

I’m in Rome this week, where this morning I took part in an hour-and-a-half radio program on RAI, the Italian state network, along with Cardinal Pio Laghi, the former Apsostolic Nunio in the United States... I agreed to do the program largely because I was interested in how the trip looked to Italians, having spent much of the last couple of weeks absorbing American commentary. This was one of those shows where we took listener phone calls and e-mails, so I figured I might get a good sense of Italian “vox populi” on the experience.

What struck me was how often our host, Massimo Franco, a well-known Italian journalist, as well our listeners raised an issue that barely registered on American radar screens during the pope’s trip: the death penalty. Why, Franco and the listeners wanted to know, didn’t Benedict XVI make more of an issue out of the difference between the United States, particularly the Bush administration, and the Catholic Church on the issue of capital punishment?

It was Burke who put into words something I’ve long sensed, and that became especially clear during the course of our conversation this morning: For many Italian Catholics, and perhaps Catholics in other European countries as well, the death penalty is what abortion is for many Catholics in the United States – the defining moral issue of the time.

That is to say, if the dominant “single issue” temptation for American Catholics is to focus almost exclusively on abortion, the analogous “single issue” tendency within Catholicism in Italy and elsewhere in Europe is the death penalty.

Anti-death penalty campaigns ... are a huge feature of Italian Catholic life, often led by the Community of Sant’Egidio and involving a wide cross-section of dioceses, parishes, and lay movements. Whenever a state anywhere in the world bans or declares a moratorium on capital punishment, Rome’s Colosseum is lit up, and Catholic groups are always in the front row among those rejoicing.

Italy takes great pride in long forming the vanguard of the abolitionist movement with regard to capital punishment. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was the first sovereign state to ban the death penalty in 1786. It did so under the influence of Italian essayist Cesare Beccaria, whose 1764 anti-death penalty tract “On Crimes and Punishments” is considered an abolitionist classic.

So strong had Italian aversion to capital punishment become that when an anarchist named Angelo Bresci assassinated King Umberto I in 1900, Italian courts sentenced him to life in prison. It was the first time a man had killed a European king (without toppling his regime) and not been executed.

That legacy is very much alive at the Catholic grassroots in today’s Italy, as our callers this morning reminded us. For them, it was therefore remarkable that the pope did not raise the issue on American soil.

For American Catholics, this focus on the death penalty rather than abortion can often seem terribly imbalanced. According to Amnesty International, there were 1,591 executions worldwide in 2006, while the estimated number of abortions around the world each year is on the order of 45 million. On a purely quantitative basis, some would argue, there’s no comparison in terms of which is the more grave threat to human life. Moreover, many abortion opponents would also argue that while all killing is wrong, with the death penalty we’re usually talking about convicted criminals, while abortion strikes at the most innocent and vulnerable.

For Italian Catholics, on the other hand, the moral gravity of the death penalty often looms larger because in this case the state is not merely tolerating an act of killing, but actually performing it. It’s one thing, they argue, for women in painful circumstances to make a tragic choice; it’s another for a state, which purports to embody the values of civilized society, to put someone to death while espousing the values of justice and due process of law. From that point of view, it’s not so much the numbers involved, as the statement capital punishment makes about the moral fabric of the state itself, that jars the conscience.

Obviously from the point of view of Catholic social teaching, this is not an “either/or” choice, but very much a “both/and.” The social doctrine of the Church regards abortion as an absolute moral wrong, and, following the magisterium of Pope John Paul II, does not exclude the death penalty on principle, but holds that “the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

A “consistent ethic of life” therefore posits opposition to both abortion and capital punishment.

Nonetheless, within that consistent ethic different cultures at different times will accent one or another issue, and for now it would seem that many American Catholics and many European, especially perhaps Italian, Catholics have a different sensibility in terms of where they make their most emphatic stand.

For Americans, it would no doubt have been huge news had Benedict XVI come to the United States and never mentioned abortion. For Italians, it seems equally shocking that Benedict came to the United States, one of just six nations which account for the bulk of annual executions worldwide, and didn’t bring up capital punishment.

One can draw a variety of different conclusions about all this, but it’s at least a valuable insight into varying Catholic attitudes on the two sides of the Atlantic.


Here are excerpts from an interview with the Community of Sant'Egidio’s Mario Marazziti, who's been leading capital punishment moratorium efforts at the U.N.

NCR: Why is this happening now?

Marazziti: There are different reasons. Some countries have reached the conclusion that they cannot have internal reconciliation with the death penalty. Rwanda and Burundi are examples. Abolition becomes a tool to prevent future violence. Those countries have 800 people on death row, and if they kill them, another cycle of violence could begin. It's the same rationale as South Africa or Cambodia. It's very interesting that the three nations with the greatest genocides of the 20th century, Rwanda, Burundi, and Cambodia, are now without the death penalty. That's a strong argument in international conversation.

NCR: How important has the church been?

Marazziti: Very important. The Catholic church, especially under John Paul II and continuing with what it's doing now, has had a real role in accompanying this change over the last 20 years, and the Philippines is one of the cases where you see that most clearly.

We've worked side-by-side with Cardinal [Renato] Martino [President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace]. He gave me a short interview to be used on Nov. 30, when we had our "Cities Against the Death Penalty" event. He said something to us that has never been said at such a high level before: "The death penalty is homicide." Unfortunately the media didn't pick up on it, but the clear meaning is that you can't answer one crime with another.

NCR: What were the behind-the-scenes tussles like?

Marazziti: After 1999, Amnesty International had consistently advised against going to the General Assembly, out of fear of losing. The problem is that in the General Assembly, it's not enough just to add up the number of countries that are against the death penalty. Politics also enters into it. We were in favor of going to the General Assembly, but in an intelligent way … not out of desperation, but on the basis of serious advance work. Then there were the radicals and groups such as Nessuno Tocchi Caino ("Hands Off Cain," the main anti-death penalty activist group in Italy) that wanted to go to the General Assembly no matter what, because whether they won or lost, they'd be on the front pages. So there were three different logics completely... We wanted to avoid that it would be seen as a project of the European Union, reflecting a neo-colonial vision of human rights. For that reason, we ended up with Brazil and Mexico as the initial supporters, and then in the Third Commission, the resolution was presented by Gabon.

Within the Third Commission, with 192 countries just like the General Assembly, there was a ferocious debate. The first effort was to say that this is a matter of the internal affairs of nations, and not of human rights. It can't be discussed because it's an internal question. Once they lost on this, the opponents argued that it shouldn't be voted on by the U.N. because it's something that divides nations rather than unites them. Of course, that would mean never doing anything, because everything is divisive in some sense. The third point was that it represents the imposition of a Western vision of human rights on other countries.

There were three principal centers of opposition: Singapore, representing some Asian countries; Egypt, for the Arab and Muslim states; and finally Barbados, for the Caribbean countries. The Caribbean countries were ferocious … they're tiny, but they put up a fight line-by-line, word-for-word.

At one point, the opponents proposed an amendment to add a paragraph saying that in the name of always defending life, it's also necessary to be against abortion. It was presented by Egypt, in the name of the Arab states. The response came from the Philippines, saying that this is a very important theme, and if there's a consensus we should present a new resolution on this subject, and we will be a co-sponsor. It has nothing to do, however, with this resolution... the Vatican doesn't vote at the UN. Nevertheless, they said the defense of life is an important subject, but exactly for that reason it has to be without exceptions. In substance, the point was that the Holy See doesn't support the way some say, 'We have to abolish the death penalty' but don't care about abortion, and meanwhile those who were now proposing something against abortion were doing so to uphold the death penalty. We shouldn't get into deciding which lives are worth defending. It was a very sharp, well-constructed position, and I thought it was quite clear.

NCR: In the end, what does this result mean?

Marazziti: First of all, the death penalty has officially become a question of human rights. From the point of view of the international community, this is new. … It fixes an official standard of justice without death. Even if it's not obligatory, it creates a moral standard. It will become ever more embarrassing for those countries that still use the death penalty.

NCR: The U.N. passes resolutions all the time that have little practical effect. Isn't it easy to see this as hollow symbolism?

Marazziti: My response is that if this is truly meaningless, then why was there such fierce opposition for 15 years? There was strong, at times almost violent, debate in the hall. The best of the UN were involved, first as individual states and then as groups, going over the resolution line-by-line and word-for-word. It was extremely arduous work. It's hard to imagine so many people would have invested this much time and effort on something that doesn't mean anything.

NCR: So far, most global press coverage of the UN vote has not highlighted the Catholic contribution. In Italy especially, the tendency has been to attribute the outcome to the efforts of the Italian government and various secular humanitarian groups, especially those linked to the Radical Party, which has long campaigned against the death penalty.

On Thursday, L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, carried an interview with Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, in the wake of the General Assembly resolution. In part, the interview focused on a perceived lack of recognition for Catholic efforts. Martino suggested that the church's role may be more difficult to appreciate since, for Catholics, the death penalty is part of a continuum of life issues that also features war, employment, and especially abortion.

Another Old Canard Resurfaces

Blacks and Catholics pitted against each other, again...


“The Ignorant Vote—Honors Are Easy” Harper’s Weekly, 1876
Simian representations of southern blacks and northern Irish Catholics, by Thomas Nast, the man who gave us Santa Claus.

Yeah, I know holding onto perpetual resentments and a sense of victimology can make for wearisome reading, but too bad... I'm feeling irascible this week... ;-)

There was some dark muttering beforehand, but in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton's victory in the Pennsylvania Primary, there was suddenly a great deal of talk going around about whether or not Obama had a "Catholic Problem", or more accurately, if Catholics had a problem with Obama's race. Now, as similar results in the Ohio primary showed, Obama does indeed seem to have a "Rust-Belt Problem". Is that the same thing as a "Catholic Problem" based upon racial prejudice? White evangelical southerners didn't turn out for him in great numbers. Was that racial prejudice? Well, maybe that's the unspoken assumption... If women and low income voters go for Hillary in a big way, does any of that get put down to race? Actually, as far as I can tell in looking at the Democratic electorate, a lot of the Clinton/Obama split is based upon age. Younger voters, the most tolerant and non-judgmental in American history, clearly tend towards Obama, and the older voters towards Clinton. Are the older voters accused of racial prejudice? Sorry to sound paranoic, but I think that a certain stereotype persists about the northern Catholic ethnic. Most stereotypes contain a kernel of truth in them, but I think this one is running out of legs, particularly since the Catholic vote in this country, coveted for several decades now as the most critical "swing vote", is so fractured.

A lot of this is familiar to me, perhaps because I went to High School in the same years that the forced busing crisis was roiling Boston and gaining national attention. There is a certain image of Massachusetts, for instance, as a bastion of Democratic Party liberalism. There is also the other image. I wrote about it on this blog's inaugural post:

Then there is the other Massachusetts, or rather, the other image of Boston... Ethnic. Bigoted. Parochial. Insular. Clannish. Rude. Racist. Stand-offish. Unfriendly. Bog-Irish. Catholic.

The busing crisis of the 1970’s left an indelible mark on the city that has been hard to shake, especially when it had been built upon a perception already held.

Back in the NBA heyday, it was a common refrain to hear from Los Angelenos what a racist city Boston was. Unfortunately for us, the glory days of the Celtics ended before the L.A. incidents surrounding Rodney King, Darryl Gates and the LAPD, the riots, and the O.J. Simpson trial fiasco, so we were never able to return the favor in full.

This state went for Clinton easily, but does some of that ethnic lunch-bucket image linger instead upon Catholic Pennsylvanians?

It's sad to see this old African-American vs. Irish Catholic thing raise its head again, as it has at various times in this nation's history. There's no need for it now, and there was no need for it back then. The old Divide-and-Conquer trick usually works to the benefit of someone else.

A smattering of thoughts on this topic from the web...

From Fr. Andrew Greeley:

Catholic racism in Pennsylvania? Seventy-two percent of Catholic Democrats in the heavily Catholic state of Pennsylvania voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton, according to the MSNBC exit polls, and more than half of them said they would not vote for Sen. Barack Obama if he won the nomination. The finding gave me a chill. On the other hand, most Obama voters said they would vote for Clinton if she should win the contest. Is Catholic racism rearing its ugly head again?

I have spent almost a half century monitoring Catholic attitudes in this country. Through the years, Catholics have been ahead of Protestant denominations though behind Jews in measures of racial tolerance and on liberal issues -- including the Vietnam war.

What is happening? Chris Matthews, a native of the Keystone State (poor dear man!), pointed out that many of them might be in neighborhoods where they felt threatened. Abortion does not seem to be an issue in this election, and not many Catholics shape their vote on this issue. Obama did very well in his home city and state among Catholics...

The media commentators operate in a world of cliches and stereotypes -- "blue collar Catholics," "ethnic Catholics," "Reagan Republican Catholics." Either these labels are false or, charitably interpreted, misleading. At their worst, they are exercises in bigotry.

Irish Catholics crossed the line of national college attendance in the first decade of the last century, Polish and Italian Catholics after World War II. Catholics now are above the national average in white-collar and professional class occupations. Some of us are showing up on elite university faculties. Some even on television news programs. There are, of course, many Catholics still in blue-collar jobs, perhaps especially in uncivilized places like Philadelphia and Boston. (Hey!!) Yet on average Catholics are disproportionately in the middle, upper middle, and even upper levels of American society. It is not Civil War time, and Catholics are not struggling for jobs with blacks as they did in the New York riots.

Research by two first-rate sociologists, Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza, has demonstrated that Catholics remained disproportionately Democrats in the Reagan years, not shifting more than anyone else. It is time to stop using "blue-collar" as a routine descriptor for Catholics. Yet many Democratic leaders are embarrassed to admit that they need Catholic votes to win an election. They are somehow unclean.

It turns out that the three-fifths of Jewish and Protestant Democrats in Pennsylvania also voted against Obama. Is it white racial prejudice in Pennsylvania?

When the Clintons go around telling people that Obama cannot win, they mean a black candidate cannot be elected. The country isn't ready for an African-American president. That's playing the race card as a trump.

From Deal Hudson:

On the heels of his relatively poor showing among Catholic voters, came the remark of well-known Catholic jurist Douglas Kmiec that Obama is a "Catholic natural." Evidently, Catholic voters are slow to recognize him as such. It's hard to blame them when Obama has voted against a law that would have protected a child once it was born and outside the womb -- the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

One Catholic blogger labeled Obama the most "Anti-Catholic Presidential Candidate." It's hard to disagree when Obama has a 100 percent pro-abortion rating from NARAL, supports partial-birth abortion, supports spending tax dollars for abortion, voted against notifying parents of minors seeking out-of-state abortions, and supports homosexual marriage.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that Obama was endorsed by one of the nation's leading abortion advocates, Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for a Free Choice. Calling Hillary Clinton "not radical enough on abortion," Kissling praised Obama as the man who could complete "the social transformation that Roe began but did not solidify."

From a blogger calling himself Mister Furious:

It's race. As someone who grew up Catholic in Connecticut with my father's family being Irish Catholic from Boston, and my mother's family Polish Catholic from New York, plus my ten years living in and around NYC among the Italian Catholic community, there is no shortage of, nor subtlety to, the racism among Catholics.Deal Hudson is full of shit (big surprise, right?) and is pretending his church doesn't have a problem with race by blaming regionalism and issues like abortion.Not even counting the supposed reluctance of Latinos (overwhelmingly Catholic) to support black candidates, there is more than enough old-school racism in these tradional Catholic cities, communities and neighborhoods. Abortion need not enter the discussion...

From a blogger named Ron Saunders:

Mr. Barack Obama does not have a Catholic problem. White Catholic voters have a problem with Mr. Obama because he is a Black man. Indeed White Catholics have a malignant racial problem which is much deeper than the candidacy of Barack Obama.

From Cathleen Kaveny on dotcommonweal:

1. The Catholic vote is not monolithic. As EJ Dionne has noted - “Despite a certain convergence of views among Catholics‹a concern for social justice, a collective dedication to the value of the family. Catholics haven’t voted as a bloc since the early 1960s, when they solidly backed America’s one and only Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Catholics’ loyalties are unpredictable and in flux.”

2. Getting to know Senator Obama. Senator Clinton is already well-known to voters. But as voters have come to know Senator Obama, he has been slowly but steadily gaining ground among Catholics, as they come to see who he is and what he stands for. Many Catholics are responding to his vision of the common good and his values on issues such as ending the unjust war in Iraq, providing decent jobs, ensuring affordable healthcare for all, and working for comprehensive immigration reform. Many have also been inspired by his life choices, especially his decision early on to work as a community organizer with parishes in the South Side of Chicago.

The Obama Catholic Advisory list includes:

National Co-Chairs:

Senator Bob Casey

Representative Patrick Murphy (PA-08)

Former Congressman Tim Roemer, President of the Center for National Policy

Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas

Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia

Tom Chabolla, Assistant to the President, Service Employees International Union

Victoria Reggie Kennedy, President, Common Sense About Kids and Guns

Sr. Jamie Phelps, O.P., Director and Professor of Theology, Institute for Black Catholic Studies, Xavier University

Sr. Catherine Pinkerton, Congregation of St. Joseph


National Steering Committee:

Mary Jo Bane, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School

Nicholas P. Cafardi, Catholic Author and Scholar, Pittsburgh, PA

Lisa Cahill, Professor of Theology, Boston College

M. Shawn Copeland, Associate Professor of Theology, Boston College

Ron Cruz, Leadership Development Consultant, Burke, VA

Sharon Daly, Social Justice Advocate, Knoxville, MD

Richard Gaillardetz, Murray/Bacik Professor of Catholic Studies, University of Toledo

Grant Gallicho, Associate Editor, Commonweal Magazine

Margaret Gannon, IHM, A Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Scranton, PA

Don Guter, Judge Advocate General of the Navy (2000-2002); Rear Admiral, Judge Advocate General's Corps, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Pittsburgh, PA

Cathleen Kaveny, Professor of Law and Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame

Jim Kesteloot, President and Executive Director, Chicago Lighthouse

Vincent Miller, Associate Professor of Theology, Georgetown University

David O'Brien, Loyola Professor of Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross

Peter Quaranto, Senior Researcher and Conflict Analyst, Resolve Uganda (Notre Dame Class of 2006)

Dave Robinson, International Peace Advocate, Erie, Pennsylvania

Vincent Rougeau, Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame

Fire at the Little Portion Hermitage

I noticed on John Michael Talbot's blog that a fire on April 28th at the Little Portion Hermitage completely destroyed their Common Center and chapel.

Providentially, no one was seriously injured. The Common Center that was lost "housed the community’s primary worship space, storage for audio/concert tour equipment, kitchen, dining rooms, offices, infirmary, classrooms, recreation room, stock room (full of CDs & books), and the library & community archive."



Talbot said:

We lost some most valuable things in the fire. Our community archives were lost and all of the books in our library. The Troubadour stockroom and inventory were lost to the flames. All of the various awards received were melted in the intense heat of the fire...

God gave members various words or locutions. I shared that God is stripping us back to what is really essential to our way of life and that we will rebuild with greater efficiency, but in stone. Someone got the image of Gideon, who was repeatedly told by the Lord that he needed fewer men, but men well-prepared for battle. Another said that she got a word that God is with us through this trial. These served to inspire us and to keep our spirits hopeful and filled with faith, hope, and love. I believe we may have lost some buildings, but He will make us stronger for going through this together.

Here is a link to make donations to a Recovery Fund.

Padraig O'Malley, Peacemaker

Working for Sunni-Shia Reconciliation with the Helsinki Initiative

Padraig O'Malley's profile, taken from the Eire Society of Boston's 2008 Gold Medal Awards:

Padraig O'Malley was born in Dublin Ireland in 1942. He was educated at University College, Dublin, and at Yale, Tufts and Harvard universities in the United States.

Professor O'Malley has authored many books, among them the award-winning Uncivil Wars: Ireland Today, Biting at the Grave, and, most recently, Shades of Difference, Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa. He is recipient of the International Association of University Presidents Peace Award (1985) and the Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Scholars (1985).

Padraig O'Malley is chiefly known for his peace and reconciliation work in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Iraq. For most of his professional life, he has been involved with the conflict in Northern Ireland. Working with all the political parties to the conflict he convened the Amherst Conference on Northern Ireland (Massachusetts, 1975), the Airlie House Conference (Virginia, 1985) and co–convened the Arniston Conference with the government of South Africa (Western Cape, 1997). In 1987 O'Malley initiated a meeting with the dissident Northern Irish hosted by Nelson Mandela in South Africa known as the Great Indaba. In 1992, he participated in bringing some of the South African figures in that transition to Boston for a meeting with representatives of the factions in Northern Ireland. Most recently, O'Malley helped arrange a 2007 conference at a resort in Finland, where 16 Iraqis met with experienced negotiators from South Africa and Ireland who described the processes toward peace in their countries.

Thank God there are still people like this around. From an article in the Boston Globe yesterday titled Bringing Iraqis to the table:

Under a deep shroud of secrecy, a chartered flight took off yesterday from Baghdad, carrying with it the dreams of a visionary University of Massachusetts professor and perhaps the prospect of reconciliation among some of the rival religious and political groups in Iraq.

Padraig O'Malley, the irrepressible academic, author, and peacemaker, has put together an extraordinary guest list for the trip from Iraq to Helsinki: 36 Iraqi leaders from across the country's sectarian divide - Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. They are set to spend the next three days talking, in heavily guarded privacy, about how to bring peace, or at least the possibility of political reconciliation, to a nation at war with itself.

It is the second such gathering of Iraqis O'Malley has organized as he takes on the bloody deadlock in that country, just as he previously forged unlikely dialogue between adamant enemies in Northern Ireland and South Africa. And he has high hopes for the weekend sessions, which will take place at an undisclosed location in Finland's capital.

"This is the most powerful group of Iraqis ever gathered outside of Iraq to talk about peace and finding a way forward together," O'Malley said in an interview on his cellphone just moments before boarding the plane...

The plane landed in Helsinki late last night, and the Iraqis were set to begin their talks today. O'Malley envisions the meeting as one in a series designed to find common ground in a land where compromise has become anathema - not to mention mortally dangerous. It is an exceptional enterprise, not just because it is happening at all, which is amazing in itself, but because of the approach O'Malley is using to facilitate reconciliation.

As at the first meeting, last September, negotiators of long experience in the sectarian struggles of Northern Ireland and South Africa will play a critical role.


Martin McGuinness, Denis Donaldson and Gerry Adams

From Northern Ireland come two men who wouldn't share a plane in 1997, when O'Malley brought his idealistic approach to that struggle. One is Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army commander who now serves as the leading member in the National Assembly and as a government minister. The other is Jeffrey Donaldson, a leader in one of the major Irish protestant parties, the Democratic Unionist Party. Both McGuinness and Donaldson, who once saw each other as mortal enemies, will try to help the Iraqis see, through their example, that it is possible to reach across years of hatred and bloodshed and find a way to work together.

Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley.
"Think about it," O'Malley said. "Now two people from Northern Ireland who just a decade ago wouldn't fly on the same plane . . . are working jointly to share their story with the Iraqis and tell them how they now work together in the same government."

Among the prominent South Africans set to attend the talks was Mac Maharaj, who for four decades was the head of the African National Congress underground during South Africa's struggle for freedom, and endured 12 years of imprisonment at Robben Island with Nelson Mandela.

The 65-year-old Dublin-born O'Malley, a distinguished professor of peace and reconciliation at UMass-Boston's John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, has worked tirelessly for months in Baghdad and by phone from his office in Boston to organize the session, building on the earlier gathering, which hatched what became known as the Helsinki Principles - a framework of common understandings and objectives for further talks.

The initiative, which has become known as the Iraq Project, was launched as a common effort by UMass-Boston, the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University, and the Crisis Management Initiative out of Helsinki.

Making the improbable seem possible has been O'Malley's work of the last 30 years.

Back in 1997, O'Malley organized a round of talks that brought the implacable adversaries of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland together with former combatants who had found a path to coexistence in South Africa.

It is hard to reckon with the idea today, but O'Malley sees more possibilities for peace in Iraq now than he did when first took on the Irish question.

"I think Northern Ireland was a lot tougher conflict to solve than Iraq," O'Malley said. "The violence in Iraq, the killing, is more widespread for sure. But the hatreds in Northern Ireland were deeper, more ancient."

But Sherman Teichman, executive director of the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts, noted that while many have called for dialogue, few have stepped in to fill the need. "One of the things that perplexes me is why we find ourselves filling this void," Teichman said. "I'm very proud that we've done it. It came down to the intellectual and moral courage of Padraig O'Malley who stands as an example of what one individual can do to work toward peace."

Bendetson, 56, the Tufts Trustee who has supported the effort, flew to Helsinki to serve within the working group of the talks. Before he left, he pointed out that these talks would not have happened without the tireless work of O'Malley, describing him as "the hero at the center of this story."

In an interview just before he flew to Helsinki, Bendetson added: "It's just the right thing to do. Look at how many Iraqis have been killed, how many Americans. It's just not that complicated. It's the right thing to do to work toward resolving the conflict. It's that simple."

An audio interview with O'Malley on NPR's Here and Now - "The Helsinki Agreement" (Story aired on Monday, September 24, 2007)

Padraig O'Malley's website, The Heart of Hope

Peter Maurin: Better or Better Off?

Words that Put Things in Perspective, or Impractical Agrarian Utopianism?

Peter Maurin, Co-Founder with Dorothy Day of the Catholic worker Movement

I want a change,
and a radical change.
I want a change
from an acquisitive society
to a functional society,
from a society of go-getters
to a society of go-givers.

As or family goes through the midst of this house-selling/house-hunting saga, in which talk of hundreds of thousands of dollars is routinely bandied about without hardly batting an eyelash, it's important to note that foreclosures are at an all-time high, the price of energy is soaring, and the price of rice has doubled in the last five weeks. In a classic case of the law of unintended consequences being brought to bear, the demand for corn in the use of bio-fuels has contributed to the worsening worldwide food shortage and spike in food prices, driving millions of those who were on subsistence diets into the real risk and danger of falling into starvation. Sam's Club and Costco are actually rationing rice. Even during World War II, we never had to ration essential foodstuffs in the United States.

The video below features words of Peter Maurin. According to our conventional economic wisdom they would be considered counter-productive and disastrous words of insanity... I have to ask, though, does the state of the world reflect the best that our conventional wisdom can do? There has to be a better way of doing things. This stuff we see is all cyclical and recurrent, and these particular wheels are running out of tread. There has to be a better way for human beings to arrange their affairs...



Peter Maurin... Madman, Fool, or Prophet?

Peter Maurin's Easy Essays

Use your rosary beads to pray the The Chaplet of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, Catholic Workers

Still Mailing Them In For the Time Being...

Happy Patriot's Day. An Acoustic and Non-Acoustic Offering



Patriot's Day is sort of a unique Massachusetts/Maine Holiday. Paul Revere's Ride, "One if by Land, Two if by Sea", first blood at Lexington Green, "The Shot Heard Round the World" at the Old North Bridge in Concord, and the Boston Marathon.

Still too busy to put up much of substance right now, so here are just a couple of musical offerings, completely unrelated to the holiday.

Los Lonely Boys, Diamonds



I love that band.

Velvet Revolver, The Last Fight



Scott Weiland is leaving Velvet Revolver and reviving the Stone Temple Pilots. As far as personalities go, I've never been much of a fan of Weiland or of Slash, but I have to admit that Weiland does have a great voice, and I liked this song.

Doing the Right Thing

Bravo, Benedict! Giving credit where credit is due, but there is more to be done...


Survivors of Joseph Birmingham - Bernie McDaid and Olan Horne

In my last post, I issued a plea for Pope Benedict to meet with some of the victims (or should I say suvivors) of clergy sexual abuse. I had a feeling that he would quietly do so, and that hope was rewarded. By all indications, the meeting with Bernie McDade and Olan Horne (Survivors of Joseph Birmingham), Faith Johnston and others went well. I heartily applaud Pope Benedict for having done this. It was an enormously important gesture, but of course, there remains more to be done.

Before the Meeting

I am not kowtowing. I will not kiss his ring. If we walk in and we're served a large plate of platitude, I can be guaranteeing you that I will be the first person to say that this man does lack the moral authority to manage the Catholic Church. I expect more than an apology when I leave that room...

After the Meeting

We were all able to answer all of the questions that needed to be asked and for him to respond to. And he did -- and he did forthright. He seemed to intrinsically understand what we were talking about. And he spoke to those issues to each one of us in a spiritual way, in a pastoral way. And he also was very respectful of where and what we wanted to talk about. My hope was restored today from what I heard... I left there with a promise, and I can guarantee you that I will hold this man's feet to the fire on the promise that he left me with today.
--Olan Horne

There were some recent statements attributed to Cardinal Levada indicating that some changes in canon law are being considered with respect to the statute of limitations. In terms of what Olan Horne was referring to, one can assume that this includes holding bishops accountable for what happened in the past and what may happen in the future. In our particular archdiocese, this would refer of course to bishops such as Bernard Cardinal Law, Bishop John McCormack, and Bishop William Murphy. The continuing relevance of the issue of bishop accountability is especially underscored when someone like the afore-mentioned William Murphy goes on record in Newsday today praising the meeting as if the crisis had very little or nothing to do with his actions. The irony and the brass of this wasn't even noted in the article.

There were some victims and victim's advocates groups who considered the meeting to be little more than a publicity stunt, or too little from the Church too late. Unfortunately, I think there are some victims, through no fault of their own, who have become so embittered that nothing would ever serve to assuage their pain other than the utter disappearance of the Catholic Church altogether, and even that might not ease their suffering. There have also been a number of lawyers who have become very wealthy out of the litigation that has come out of this scandal. Be that as it may, justice does need to be served and laypeople do have to continue to be vigilant and to respectfully press for accountability from the hierarchy. If that pressure is taken away, we will all too easily fall back into the patterns that allowed the crisis to arise and fester to begin with. More has to be done than to simply belabor the same old points about the over-sexualization of our culture and the failings of individual priests, even if they are fair observations to make. The hierarchy needs to look inward, not just outward.

Listen on WBUR, Locals React to Pope's Meeting

Please Meet With Some Victims...

A Plea to the Holy Father For While He's Here



Welcome to the United States. May your visit be blessed and productive.

Also, please take into consideration the VOTF's reasonable petitions.

1. Treat survivors of sexual abuse with the justice and compassion our faith demands.

2. Hold bishops accountable to the people they serve.

3. Embrace full participation of Catholic men and women in Church decision-making.

4. Require full financial transparency and accountability in all governance matters.


We believe these steps will produce:

- An open, transparent and accountable Church

- A participative Church embracing the gifts and talents of the baptized

- A Church governed by compassion, informed by justice, empowered by equality, and animated to act collegially

Six-Word Memoir

In response to William’s Meme Tag

I Could Have Been a Contender

Image and following quote are basically lifted from an old post of mine titled “An Instinct to See Life In a Comic Light”, which unfortunately is more than six words.


Noonday Rest, by Jean François Millet (1866)

”Supreme egotism and utter seriousness are necessary for the greatest accomplishment, and these the Irish find hard to sustain; at some point, the instinct to see life in a comic light becomes irresistible, and ambition falls before it.”
-William Shannon

Then again, there are times when I feel like I’m…

Making the Most of Limited Abilities

Which makes me wonder if it’s really true that…

Adversity Introduces a Man to Himself

I don’t have five people to tag outside of our small circle here, most of them have already been tagged, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to be a chain-letter killer.

What's With the State of the Catholic Blogosphere?

I noticed over at Crystal's today that Mark Mossa SJ has decided to stop posting to his blog And I let Myself be Duped. That's a damned shame. Yet another reasonable voice in Catholic blogdom feels compelled to check out. Mossa wrote:

I began blogging after finding myself victim to a certain amount of slander for writing a not wholly complimentary review of a book by George Weigel. In my subsequent dialogue with the author of the post—who publicly apologized for making uncharitable presumptions about me merely based on that review—I thought I saw an opportunity, an opportunity to bridge a gap between people of different perspectives in the Church. So, I threw my hat into the fray and it was fun, for a while. It even appeared that I might make some progress in this endeavor and perhaps even accomplish some goals that I had set for myself in becoming aware of the various dimensions of the Catholic blogosphere—trying to encourage some positive discourse, and hoping to offer a counterweight to the negative and unfair caricature of the Society of Jesus which obtains in many a corner of that blogosphere. And, at first, there seemed to be some hope of success at this, and there are still a coterie of bloggers (you know who you are) that give me hope in this regard. Yet, I’ve grown tired of swimming against the tide. The most negative of Catholic blogs still continue to be the most popular and, like myself, the more positive bloggers seem to be posting with far less frequency.

Now, I hate to sound like sour grapes, but I have to say that in regard to that last sentence I admit I've made note of the fact that the tenor and tone of the Catholicism I see in the day-in-and-day-out life of the Church in your average Catholic parish, among those who attend Mass weekly, in no way resembles what I see reflected among some of the perennial favorites in the annual Catholic Blog Awards. In some cases, fixations upon apologetics, or liturgical rubrics, or demonization and ridicule of the "other side" become a fetish to the point of idolatry. The disputations and poison-pen diatribes become substitutes for the Faith itself.

I suppose everyone who runs a blog is entitled to a rant now and then, but what is it with blogging that tends to lead us towards an utter breakdown in civility over time? I'm seeing more and more blogging weariness all around me. Do we all feel so safe behind a keyboard that we feel free to write things that we would never say face-to-face without coming to blows? I remember a high school teacher in our driver's ed class telling us something similar about the effect of sitting behind the wheel of a car. Cutting people off and flipping them the bird is a lot easier to do in a car than in a checkout-counter line, no doubt. Is the internet really a forum where the free exchange of ideas leads to mutual appreciation and understanding and lets the best ideas flow to the top, or is anger and resentment always going to be an easier sell? Does the internet bring people together, or does it divide them into smaller and smaller specialized segments where the tolerance of dissent from the mores of the particular group in question becomes a sliver of light that grows ever narrower?

Don't think that I'm saying there isn't plenty of this to go around. This happens regardless of ideology. I had to put banning software on this blog because of the outrageous incivility of one of the most (professed) liberal bloggers I've ever encountered. I noticed on Vox Nova a short while ago that some of the contributors were taking Gerald Augustinus of The Cafeteria is Closed to the woodshed (and rightfully so, IMO) for an egregious remark that had been left on his blog, and among other things Gerald responded:

Please get in line with the insults. There’s already a pitchfork-wielding mob outside because I am too ‘gay-friendly’ and advocated equal rights for gay folks. 325 comments. Some of which are far more troublesome than the one you quoted...

On the bright side, Michael, I’m getting really, really tired of blogging. Now excuse me while I keep an eye out for the Spanish Inquisition...

I took the Cafeteria tag out of my logo, btw, so spare me the umpteenth dig re: that. When I put it up, I a) meant it as a bon mot and b) had no idea that bishops would, eg, actively campaign against civil unions for homosexuals. Since I came out in favor of that and defended gay adoption (based on my wife’s prior work in the field and from the example of friends), too, my position as a ‘Cafeteria Catholic’ is firmly established and need not be brought up at every turn, as if it were a new insight. I freely admit it. The far-right and whatever you could be described as are correct in saying so.

So, there you go. Even there we see it. He's as conservative as they generally come, and he's taking heat. I have to point out, too, that even in the atmosphere of heady intellectualism on Vox Nova, the progressive contributors Michael Iafrate and Morning's Minion get hit with plenty of personal digs on a regular basis.

Is it possible that some of us do this too long? Can we be in combat-mode for too long a period? Does that explain how a Stephen Hand, author of TCRNews Musings, one of the best Catholic blogs I ever saw on the web, chucked it and traded it in for The Bride and the Dragon, a launching-pad for attacks on Vatican II, Modernists, Jews, and Freemasons, because Pope Benedict happened to have a meeting with Hans Kung?

As much as I might be tempted to despair about the state of Catholic blogdom, I noticed it isn't much better with the Protestants. The Arminians and the Emerging Church have no truck with Calvinists, and Calvinists have nothing but contempt for everyone who isn't, well, a Calvinist... Including "Hyper-Calvinists". Makes me think I'm onto something with paragraph 3.