Zarqawi and bin Laden: “It was loathing at first sight”

If there is a periodical which interested people should read for serious, in-depth articles on national and international affairs, especially developments in the Middle East, it is the Atlantic Magazine.

This month, they published a cover story article called “Inside the Jihad. The Making of America’s Deadliest Enemy in Iraq”, on the topic of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. In the online edition, they have since edited it after Zarqawi’s death, and named it “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab aL-Zarqawi". It detailed the events of his life, from city thief and brawling thug, to gangster, to prison tank boss, to jihadist.

Back in April, I had put up a post speculating that Osama bin laden might be dead, and that there was a power struggle of sorts going on between between Zarqawi and bin Laden’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. According to the sources cited in the Atlantic article, the animosity between bin Laden and Zarqawi was real and intense.

In December 1999, al-Zarqawi crossed the border into Afghanistan, and later that month he and bin Laden met at the Government Guest House in the southern city of Kandahar, the de facto capital of the ruling Taliban. As they sat facing each other across the receiving room, a former Israeli intelligence official told me, “it was loathing at first sight.”

According to several different accounts of the meeting, bin Laden distrusted and disliked al-Zarqawi immediately. He suspected that the group of Jordanian prisoners with whom al-Zarqawi had been granted amnesty earlier in the year had been infiltrated by Jordanian intelligence; something similar had occurred not long before with a Jordanian jihadist cell that had come to Afghanistan. Bin Laden also disliked al-Zarqawi’s swagger and the green tattoos on his left hand, which he reportedly considered un-Islamic. Al-Zarqawi came across to bin Laden as aggressively ambitious, abrasive, and overbearing. His hatred of Shiites also seemed to bin Laden to be potentially divisive—which, of course, it was. (Bin Laden’s mother, to whom he remains close, is a Shiite, from the Alawites of Syria.)

Al-Zarqawi would not recant, even in the presence of the legendary head of al-Qaeda. “Shiites should be executed,” he reportedly declared. He also took exception to bin Laden’s providing Arab fighters to the Taliban, the fundamentalist student militia that, although now in power, was still battling the Northern Alliance, which controlled some 10 percent of Afghanistan. Muslim killing Muslim was un-Islamic, al-Zarqawi is reported to have said.

Unaccustomed to such direct criticism, the leader of al-Qaeda was aghast.

Had Saif al-Adel—now bin Laden’s military chief—not intervened, history might be written very differently…..As an Egyptian who had attempted to overthrow his own country’s army-backed regime, al-Adel saw merit in al-Zarqawi’s views. Thus, after a good deal of debate within al-Qaeda, it was agreed that al-Zarqawi would be given $5,000 or so in “seed money” to set up his own training camp outside the western Afghan city of Herat, near the Iranian border. It was about as far away as he could be from bin Laden.

At least five times, in 2000 and 2001, bin Laden called al-Zarqawi to come to Kandahar and pay bayat—take an oath of allegiance—to him. Each time, al-Zarqawi refused. Under no circumstances did he want to become involved in the battle between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. He also did not believe that either bin Laden or the Taliban was serious enough about jihad.

When the United States launched its air war inside Afghanistan, on October 7, 2001, al-Zarqawi joined forces with al-Qaeda and the Taliban for the first time. He and his Jund al-Sham fought in and around Herat and Kandahar. Al-Zarqawi was wounded in an American air strike—not in the leg, as U.S. officials claimed for two years, but in the chest, when the ceiling of the building in which he was operating collapsed on him. Neither did he join Osama bin Laden in the eastern mountains of Tora Bora, as U.S. officials have also said. Bin Laden took only his most trusted fighters to Tora Bora, and al-Zarqawi was not one of them.

Later … in October 2004, after resisting for nearly five years, al-Zarqawi finally paid bayat to Osama bin Laden—but only after eight months of often stormy negotiations. After doing so he proclaimed himself to be the “Emir of al-Qaeda’s Operations in the Land of Mesopotamia,” a title that subordinated him to bin Laden but at the same time placed him firmly on the global stage. One explanation for this coming together of these two former antagonists was simple: al-Zarqawi profited from the al-Qaeda franchise, and bin Laden needed a presence in Iraq. Another explanation is more complex: bin Laden laid claim to al-Zarqawi in the hopes of forestalling his emergence as the single most important terrorist figure in the world, and al-Zarqawi accepted bin Laden’s endorsement to augment his credibility and to strengthen his grip on the Iraqi tribes. Both explanations are true.

It was a pragmatic alliance, but tenuous from the start.

“From the beginning, Zarqawi has wanted to be independent, and he will continue to be,” Oraib Rantawi, the director of the Al-Quds Center for Political Studies in Amman, said to me. “Yes, he’s gained stature through this alliance, but he only swore bayat after all this time because of growing pressure from Iraqis who were members of al-Qaeda. And even then he signed with conditions—that he would maintain control over Jund al-Sham and al-Tawhid, and that he would exert operational autonomy. His suicide bombings of the hotels in Amman”—in which some sixty civilians died, many of them while attending a wedding celebration—“was a huge tactical mistake. My understanding is that bin Laden was furious about it.”

The attacks, which represented an expansion of al- Zarqawi’s sophistication and reach, also showed his growing independence from the al-Qaeda chief. They came only thirteen months after he had sworn bayat. The alliance had already begun to fray.

Some analysts are now predicting that Al Qaeda in Iraq may be more likely to unite the various insurgent groups under its umbrella now that Zarqawi is gone than when he was alive, because his replacement is likely to be far less sectarian than Zarqawi. It makes me wonder who gave him up? Who ratted him out? Was it Al Qaeda themselves?

James Cameron, lynching survivor, passes away at 92

Civil rights activist James Cameron, founder of the Black Holocaust Museum, has passed away at the age of 92. In 1930, at the age of 16, he survived a mob lynching, in his words, because of "a miraculous intervention" from Divine Providence. Listen to this short NPR interview with him here.

Czech Republic: 3 USA: 0 .... Ouch!

AP Photo

Well, so much for the USA's fifth place world ranking... Stick a fork in 'em folks, they're all done... Even if they managed a miracle to beat Italy, the goal differential hole they dug themselves against the Czechs is too deep to overcome. The American team was completely outclassed by a much more aggressive squad with superior, dazzling skills.

As I said before, I really like watching World Cup soccer. It's such a huge, world-captivating event, but it's also fascinating to see such a high level of play. The skills on display are just amazing. As I watch it however, I can't help thinking of a number of reasons why I don't think this sport will ever really catch on in the USA, at least while it is still predominantly English-speaking. :-)

1) We really stink at it. If we can't be the best, we tend to act like spoiled children and lose interest.

2) The bargain-basement histrionics. What actors. What divas! There is some aggressive tackling that goes on, and I'm sure it hurts to be tripped at full speed, but I've seen what would be labeled as "incidental contact" in the NFL with barely any notice, cause these guys to fling themselves to the ground and roll around in agony as if they'd been knee-capped with a cattle gun. Come on, guys... Boston Herald sportwriter Gerry Callahan had a funny column about the game today that included this quote:

Speaking of which, do these guys know they’re on television? In high definition? With slow-motion replays? Do they realize how silly they look when they grab their hamstrings and fall to the ground as if they had been shot when they were virtually untouched by an opposing player? Do they all have to be such phonies? I mean, is it required? At any given time, there are more drama queens on a soccer field than backstage at La Cage aux folles.

Yesterday, I saw two Czech players taken off the field on stretchers after obvious flops. They both made AJ Soprano look like Olivier, but it’s apparently part of the game: You dive, you flop, you writhe, you scream, you grab something and you get up and play 30 seconds later.

3) As far as I know, we are the only ones of God's creatures with thumbs opposable to each of our fingers. We can do really great things with our hands. So why a sport with no hands...?

4) The game has a built-in flaw in that it is too hard to score. Defense really has the upper hand. In my opinion, this doesn't make the game less exciting, it just makes for too many draws. Americans can't see the point of playing anything without having a winner. When draws do occur, and they happen often in the late rounds, the games are decided by penalty kicks, which is a terribly unjust way to decide the game. They ought to consider continuing play, gradually removing players from the field as they go along.

5). Only one man in the stadium knows when the game is going to end, and that is the referee. At his discretion and whim, he can decide when the injury time is up, or when he is going to stop letting one team have a "last chance". This will never fly in the egalitarian States, where the referee would never be so trusted. Nine innings, four quarters, clocks down to the hundredth of a second. When it's over, it's over.

Theories on the Meaning of the Atonement

The Crucifixion, with the Virgin and St. John by Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588 – 1629) Click on image to see larger version.

(Brugghen was a Protestant, but most likely painted this piece for Catholic patrons in Utrecht)

I love this paining by Brugghen, not so much for its image of Christ, but for the simple, homely Dutch peasants who were used for the models, contemplating Christ’s sacrifice on their behalf.

A couple of weeks ago, Paula pointed out that A Minor Friar had written an excellent quick and dirty guide to the atonement. I hope that at some point the Friar will give us the benefit of the more in depth version too. :-)

St. Anslem of Canterbury and Peter Abelard were a couple of the better know Catholic brainiacs of the 11th and 12th centuries. They both held different views of the atonement, not only from each other, but from what had been held in common between both the Eastern and Western halves of the Church in the first millennium of Christendom.

For the first one thousand years of Christianity, the prevailing theory of atonement has been variously described as the “Classical Theory”, “Recapitulation”, “Christus Victor”, and the “Ransom Theory”. In this view, Jesus paid a debt to Satan, or the “grave”, for our sins rather than to God. It emphasizes Christ’s victory over evil and His release of humanity from bondage to Satan. It puts more saving power of the Christ event in the incarnation than on the cross. This theory is still the one that is held by most theologians in the Eastern Orthodox Church, which does not really have a doctrine of Original Sin. They don’t look to St. Augustine for anything. In fact, some of them think he was a heretic. St. Augustine was not proficient in Greek. The Orthodox claim he fatally misread Romans 5: 12 from the Latin Vulgate as "and so death spread to all men, through one man, in whom all men sinned" instead of "Sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned." (They say that in Latin the Greek idiom eph ho which means because of was mis-translated as in whom.) They believe that we inherit death and corruption from Adam, but not his sin. Therefore, they don’t look at the atonement the way that we commonly do in the West.

Due to the influence of St. Augustine’s doctrine of Original sin and the development of feudalism in the West, this juridicial ethos led to the development of the Satisfaction Theory by St. Anslem of Canterbury, who published Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became man) in 1098. Anslem was not content with the theory that God had tricked the devil and had essentially pulled a “bait and switch” on him. It wasn’t fitting, nor was it fitting to have a debt owed to the devil, but rather, to God. The Satisfaction model is still the one most prevalently held in the Catholic Church today (although strong Christus Victor elements are retained - see Salvation in Catholicism) In this model, the logic is built from a feudal understanding of society. Adam, an inferior being, had offended God, a superior being. Satisfaction for the offense and restoration of honor was demanded by the superior being. In feudalism, only a person of equal rank within a hierarchy can make amends to the one who has been offended. Justice reigned supreme in value over mercy. Only the freely chosen sacrifice of a God-Man could serve to make amends to God, and this is what Jesus freely chose to do out of love for us, on our behalf.

I don’t really have a problem accepting the Satisfaction Theory itself. The Stations of the Cross is my favorite Lenten devotion. I sense deeply and profoundly that in some fashion, Jesus did make a sacrifice on our behalf. What bothers me about it is that it slides too easily into the theory held later by some of the Protestant reformers of Penal Substitutionary Atonement, in which the freely chosen sacrifice of Jesus is underplayed, and we see instead a wrathful God who is actually punishing Jesus in our place. It is a theory of a bloodthirsty deity who demanded the death of his son to placate his anger at humanity. To me, such a view is unworthy of God and insults him.

Peter Abelard was one of the most brilliant men of the 12th century (and is a fascinating and tragic story in and of himself for another time). He had a theory of atonement very different from Anselm’s. In his Moral Theory, Christ did not die to pay a debt on our behalf to either the devil or to God. Instead, he died to pour charity into our hearts. Christ’s life and death provided us with a moral example to follow. Love and mercy override God’s demand for justice.

Here are some interesting articles on atonement.

Various Christian theories of the Atonement

A Covenantal View of atonement

Atonement – Wikipedia

Violence In Christian Theology – Non-violent atonement

Christ's Death: A Rescue Mission, Not a Payment for Sins (Frederica Mathewes Green)

Warnography

We all know that pornography is ubiquitous on the internet. It may in fact be the thing that most drives the internet. I think everyone should see a bit of it just for the sake of having some awareness of what it is, but to wallow in it is to deaden the soul. The same holds true, but even more so, for “warnography”.

A lot of us have been kept naïve as to exactly what the horrors of war are. In this country, at least, we see very few graphic images of the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our network and cable news programs are extremely sanitized. The web, however, is full of dark corners to view images and videos of the carnage.

Not enough people know the actual effects of what bullets, shrapnel, and high explosives actually do to the human body. More people should. If they did know, they might think harder about what war means to begin with. What war does to the body is the ultimate in obscenity. It is the worst kind of porn. It makes sexual pornography pale in comparison. When they say that “war is hell”, nothing truer has ever been spoken. After seeing these kinds of images, it almost makes you want to see embracing flesh just as a celebration of being alive.

While I do think there should be more awareness, there is unfortunately a pathological alt.subculture that revels in this and allows it to deaden their collective souls. Not long ago, I came upon this post on Jihadwatch, which was raising an alarm about an Islamist website and forum that shows Al Qaeda “snuff videos” of American troops being shot by snipers, or more commonly, of IEDs exploding next to American military vehicles. In most cases, the commentary of these kinds of videos includes the perpetrators chanting “allahu akbar… allahu akbar… allahu akbar…” against a soundtrack of jihadist music. They post articles from American newspapers about deceased American servicemen and mock them.

jazakallah for those videos, i like the one where they shoot 1 american at a time. they first show him just patrolling, then bang bang. lol. it shows dem not to mess with ppl in their own countries. an illegal war....now they gona face the consequences. whether they like it or not.

There sure is a ton of irony to be found on the web, this invention of ours. The world is seeing something, or at least Americans are seeing something, that has rarely or never been seen before – Video images of Americans being injured and killed in a war.


Not that we are innocent here. Early on, there were times at work when we’d send URLs to each other with grim satisfaction, showing what we were inflicting on terrorists, and there are plenty of psychotic “reality” sites where Americans wallow in mayhem. What may be even more troubling and irresponsible, however, is what sometimes comes out of our own Pentagon briefings – Photos like the ones we’ve seen of the dead Zarqawi. The photos of Saddam Hussein's sons, where we even took the ghoulish step of applying pancake make-up to their dead faces. The briefings often show JDAM-guided bombs obliterating buildings, and the briefers go on to talk about the forensic teams going in afterwards to pick up the human bits and pieces for fingerprint and DNA evidence as dispassionately as a Jeffrey Dahmer... In the battle for hearts and minds, what do they think the Islamic world makes of this? Do they have that much of a tin ear? After “shock and awe”, I guess they do. If we treat dead Arabs like lab specimens or bagged deer, should we be shocked when they post videos of humvees being blown apart?

Tons of irony on the web… Today, we can be vicariously brutalized, almost as brutalized as the victims and combatants themselves. What a dehumanizing age. What a thing war is. Is man destined to live this way forever, or until we destroy ourselves? Will we ever be worthy of the promises of Christ?

More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it? – Jeremiah 17:9

Appreciating Vatican II: Nostra Aetate

Lest we ever forget, Jesus was a Jew, as were his Apostles.

As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock…

…The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: "theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church's main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ's Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people. -- Nostra Aetate

One of the main reasons I started this blog is because I have detected among Catholics on the web, and in most of Catholic blogdom in particular, a real lack of appreciation for Vatican II. Most Catholic blogs appear to me to be ultra-traditionalist. Among these traditionalists are some people too young not only to remember the pre-Vatican II Church, but too young to remember Vatican II as well. They are nostalgic for the image of a Church that they never knew. Since Pope John Paul II’s death, I’ve detected a shift, some of it subtle, some of it not so subtle, of directing blame for the state of the Church from those who somehow committed abuses in the name of Vatican II to the Council itself. I think this is a huge mistake. It is my view that the Second Vatican Council was a true gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church and to the world. If we have failed to put it into practice, or if we have since made matters worse by retreating from it in fear, that is hardly the fault of the Council or of the Holy Spirit that guided it. In my opinion, the Council happened at the last possible moment it could have; barely in the nick of time. Without it, I doubt there would be much left to save.

What has most caused me to distance myself from the traditionalist movement on the web has been the crude and disgusting anti-semitism that has been shown by the more extreme elements, and a reluctance to condemn it on the part of the less extreme elements.

One of the wonderful documents of the Council was Nostra Aetate – The Declaration On The Relation Of The Church To Non-Christian Religions. After the Second World War, the Church clearly had to come to terms with the Holocaust and what role the manner of speaking about Jews for centuries in Europe and in the Church had to do with it. The document stated unequivocally:

Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.

Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.

Last year, Hurricane Katrina disabused us of the notion that this country has completely freed itself from its legacy of racism. In a speech given to a group of Jewish community leaders in Boston in May, Cardinal O’Malley shared an anecdote in which he was confronted with anti-semitism quite unexpectedly, and shows that we still have a legacy of our own to wrestle with as well.

Let me share with you an experience I have many years ago working with immigrants in Washington D.C. I was visited in my rather dingy offices on Mount Pleasant Street by two gentlemen from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, who came to speak to me about anti-Semitism in the Hispanic community. I felt completely blindsided. I said to the gentlemen, “Most of our people are from very remote, rural villages in El Salvador and other central American countries. Most of them have never met a Jew, and probably don’t know who you are. The only exceptions would be, those whom we placed in Jewish homes and businesses, through our employment agency, and they were unanimous in their praise and affection for their Jewish employers, who universally treated them with generosity and respect.”

I assured the men that they were barking up the wrong tree, and sent them off with that “don’t call me, I’ll call you” complimentary close. A couple of days later, at a meeting with my parishioners to plan Holy Week, one of the people said, “Padre, this year on the Sábado de Gloria, let’s have a burning of the Jew.”

I was horrified. I thought I didn’t understand what he was saying, and in disbelief, I asked him again and again to repeat. I finally realized that in many of the villages were he’d come from, Holy Saturday was like a Catholic Guy Fawkes Day. As the English say, “Remember, remember, the Fifth of November,” and then they burn the pope in effigy on the anniversary of the Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot. The scriptures describe the suicide of Judas, who sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. It says that he hanged himself, and his body burst open. Accordingly the folkloric custom arose of hanging Judas in effigy and filling the dummy with fireworks. The atrocious practice was dubbed, “la quema del judio.” The burning of the Jew.

I ran back to my office, rifled through my desk, looking for the business card of the gentlemen from the Anti-Defamation League; luckily, I throw nothing out. I was very embarrassed, but I explained what happened, and asked for their help to educate my parishioners. They came up with the idea of a Seder meal, and produced a wonderful Argentine Rabbi, Leon Klenicki, who came and conducted a Seder meal in Spanish. We had it on Holy Thursday, the night of the last supper, the night when Jesus celebrated his Seder meal. The whole community was fascinated to see the connection between the Seder meal and Eucharistic celebration of the mass. After that no one asked to burn any Jews.

The whole affair reminded me that Cervantes had dealt with anti-Semitism in one of his famous works. In the Spain of Alfonso el Sabio, Jews, Moors and Christians lived in peace. But that peace was shattered, and there was much persecution of those who were not Christians. Cervantes, who was very possibly from a conversos family himself, wrote a book called, El Retablo de las Maravillas, sort of a Spanish version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. And in the work, he describes a group of actors who traveled from village to village and put on plays in the public square. And when they would assemble the whole crowd, people would come. They would announce the name of the play and then tell them that this was a magical play and the only ones who would be able to see it, were those who had pure blood. There was great obsession with what the Spanish call, “limpia de sangre.” In other words, no Moorish or Jewish blood, only old Christians could see the play. And then they pulled back the curtain and began the music. The people would laugh and applaud and cheer, and of course there was nothing on the stage.

Once and for all, we too must expose racism and anti-Semitism for what is - a fraud, a lie, an affront to humanity.

Dante's Inferno Test

My fate?

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!

Take the Dante Inferno Test

OK... Then again, maybe you shouldn't. Remind me to file this under "Bad ideas". :-)

Catching up on old correspondence

Erasmus of Rotterdam, by Hans Holbein the Younger

A couple of new guests have added some late posts to some of the older threads that are due to roll off soon. I think they have good points in them, and I’d like to let some of the more frequent guests here see them and free feel to comment on them too.


Mike McG posted on 'Baghdad ER – The Cost of War'.

Mike McG... said...

Three comments:
1. "We can't kill our way out of this war." So true; a profoundly helpful reframing. Thank you.
2. My wife and I saw Bagdad ER last night. Incredibly moving. We need to see the wages of war. Only regret: too little focus on Iraqi casualties.
3. While observing the stirring recent marches on behalf of undocumented immigrants, I reflected that we haven't seen such a massive outpouring on behalf of a peace and justice issue since the end of the Vietnam war. Commonalities, then and now: there were concrete, personal consequences for not marching. The House bill would criminalize the undocumented; the draft put middle class boys' lives at risk.

I seriously doubt we'd be in Iraq today if there were a draft. Middle class Americans wouldn't stand for sending their children, but somehow the economic conscription of the poor is tolerable, even to us progressives.

Mike makes a good point that the Baghdad ER program could have focused more on Iraqi casualties than it did, particularly Iraqi civilian casualties. I heard one doctor in the program saying that they kept our troops on one side of the unit, Iraqi civilians on the other, and “the bad guys” in between. The progam didn’t focus much on the Iraqi casualties, but the ‘On Point’ Radio program did a bit more. There was an interview with one doctor who related how an insurgent was brought into the unit, “coded” several times, but was rescued and revived. The insurgent was furious to have been rescued by the Americans. For all the suffering we’ve endured and inflicted there, I do think it says something about us as a people that we are willing to give the same level of care and effort to the insurgent casualties as we do to our own troops.

On the third point, Mike is absolutely right. If there was a draft in this country this Iraqi adventure would never have been embarked upon. Not a chance. Due to the fact that these soldiers all volunteered, there is far less reticence on the part of the government to use them, and there is danger in this. Our founding fathers were very distrustful about the idea of professional soldiery. That is why they preferred to see a citizen militia. As it stands now, our all-volunteer military, impressive as they are, are not reflective of the country as a whole. They tend to be “red-state”, southern in style and character, and politically conservative. I’m not saying that this is wrong in and of itself. It just tends to build an atmosphere in which the military feels isolated from the very people it has been assigned to protect. I fear that over time this professional class of warriors will tend to see themselves more and more as an embattled minority which lives in loyalty to itself and its own members, and its own values, and not to the “slackers” they’ve been commisioned to defend.

In the thread 'Greeley on Poland: Does affluence trump traditionalism?', my old friend Joseph has weighed in.

Joe is one of my two best buddies in the world. He has lived in Madrid since 1989. My other best friend, Kevin, lives in Berlin… as in Berlin, Massachusetts. :-)

Back in the 80’s we used to spend long nights talking into the small hours of the morning, exploring mysteries on faith, women, and trying to fix the world’s problems. Faith and the world’s problems were pretty easy relative to the other one. Women are still a mystery to us, and we admit that better men than us have tried to figure them out. ;-D

Joe gives his take on Spain, and I think his comments are eloquent and insightful. Donald Rumsfeld talks about “Old Europe”. There is still some wisdom left in old Europe, as my good friend has discovered.

Joe said...

We are what we eat. Its true in that the food we eat each day (lifestyle, culture, beliefs, biased and unbiased media, stance justification, etc ) shapes our perpective on everything from patriotism to religion. Put another way, its difficult to have the Vision to climb out of the box we live in to see (and accept) the experiences and views in the boxes just around us or in the ones far away from us. In fact, it takes a Visionary to do so, in spite of the fact that information at a global level is more available than ever.

The Spanish post-Franco knee-jerk reaction to the institutional church was predictable. Mass attendance and "practicing Catholicism" is about as low as it can go, yet the real stuff of Faith remains strong just below the surface of the collective Spanish skin.

Living the hard experience of 40 years of dictatorship and forced fed institutional Catholicism is quite a learning experience to have in your knapsack. The Spanish Civil war and the dictatorship that followed is recent enough for people here to have 1st and 2nd hand experiences "fresh" in their minds. Learning experiences can be painful (even unjust). But they always provide us a perspective that we did not have before that experience. In that sense even the painful experience has an extremely positive side in that it provides Wisdom and heightened perspective.

Growing up as an American Catholic (in my box) it was pretty easy to write off the European attitude as cynicism. After 17 years of living abroad its been interesting to discover that Wisdom is not so scarce (or cynical) as I might have believed.

I always had my own particular view on the "practice" of the Catholic Faith. I've always asked myself what Christ might have thought of the church born of His name, (which is another rant for another time...) My time in Europe has accentuated that perspective. Its so much about humanity through the perspective of the figure of Christ than about Divinity through the doctrine of an institution called the catholic church.

I honestly don't feel its self justification for where I find myself today. I feel blessed to "find myself" in tune with the journey toward Christ with many of the folks around me here on the old continent.

World Cup Roundup

The USA is ranked 5th??

Although my son is an avid soccer player, and we enjoy watching his games intensely, I have to admit that like most Americans, I don’t follow professional soccer too closely. An exception for me, however, is the World Cup. I usually do follow this huge event and enjoy watching it and tracking the teams.

The USA has qualified again for the World Cup this year. Perennially, the team has been considered a joke around the world even though they did manage to cling to life in enough games in 2002 to squeak into the quarterfinals.

This year, they are not considered a joke at all. The team has improved to the point that FIFA has them tied for fifth place in the rankings as the teams head into the Cup. The main reason the USA Team is so highly regarded is not so much for the individual skills of its players, but because they are known to be one of the most superbly conditioned teams in the world. Their players have been willing to submit to training regimens that some of the prima donna, highly paid stars in the European leagues would not allow themselves to be subjected to.


FIFA’s world rankings before the World Cup.

1 Brazil
2 Czech Republic
3 Netherlands
4 Mexico
5 USA
5 Spain
7 Portugal
8 France
9 Argentina
10 England
.
.
.
13 Italy
:
19 Germany


Even with that high ranking, the USA has a tough road ahead of it. It starts out in one of the most difficult groups, with Italy, Ghana, and the Czech Republic. Tough teams to beat, every one of them.

High ranking or not, the USA is considered a long-shot (90-1)to win the Cup. Here are the current favorites among the oddsmakers:


Brazil: 3-1
Argentina: 13-2
England: 7-1
Germany: 8-1
Holland: 9-1
Italy: 9-1
France: 10-1
Spain: 16-1
Portugal: 20-1
Czech Republic: 25-1
USA: 90-1


Now, for the darker side of the cup... Our friend Paula has posted here about moral relativism in Germany, and while some Germans are worried that the behavior of Neo-Nazi hooligans might embarrass the Germans in hosting the World Cup, the bigger story might be in the human trafficking that is expected to occur.

Importing 40,000 Sex workers for the World Cup? Is Germany out of control?

Prostitution is legal in Germany, and for the World Cup, it is expected that in addition to the 400,000 legal prostitutes already working in Germany, an expected 40,000 additional “sex workers” will be imported/lured/drawn/coerced into coming to Germany to meet the expected “demand”.

Human sex trafficking and slavery is one of the world’s most under-reported problems. Thousands and thousands of Eastern European and Asian girls and women are being manipulated and abused in this world-wide scourge, often to meet the tastes of men in the West.

Some people here and abroad advocate the legalization of prostitution. How can a moral case ever be made for it? I know that there are woman who say that they do this of their own free will without coercion. Can that ever really be true? I find it hard to fathom or believe that a woman could ever do this without severe moral, social, psychological and physical trauma. I have three daughters of my own. If anyone should ever suggest to them the viability of this as a “career choice”, the consequences for that person would be most unpleasant.

What can the Germans be thinking?

Here is an NPR radio story on Concerns Over World Cup's Impact on German Sex Trade, and a BBC video piece.

Here are some anti-human trafficking links:

Nuns show the red card to forced World Cup prostitution (CATW)

Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute

Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)

“An instinct to see life in a comic light…”

While reading Jack Beatty’s terrific biography of Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, The Rascal King, The Life and Times of James Michael Curley – An Epic of Urban Politics and Irish America, I came upon this quote from William V. Shannon, who was known in the early part of the 20th century for having written a monumental sociological analysis of the Irish in America.

”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.”

The instinct to see life in a comic light becomes irresistible… Speaking for myself, sometimes I feel like the venerable Mr. Shannon has me pinned down like a moth to a corkboard.

My Italian grandmother grew up in the fabled multi-ethnic neighborhood of Boston called the West End (which disappeared in the urban renewal projects of the 1950’s). She married a neighbor who was an Irishman, much to her father’s consternation. Her father, a one-legged self-made man who worked his way up from a shoe-shine box to owning a tenement, used to refer to my Irish grandfather as “The Statue”, presumably because he thought he stood around all day doing nothing… It wasn’t true, and it wasn't fair, but that’s how the tough old Neapolitan saw it.

My beloved grandmother was always challenging us to be better. When she passed away from pancreatic cancer in her late eighties, I remember the last thing she ever said to me. She rolled over, fixed me with her gaze, pointed her wizened old finger at me and said “procrastinator!” What a send-off, but you were right, Nan. I’m working on it. God Bless you. :-)

The first record I ever bought with my own money…

...Was It's Only Rock 'N Roll by the Rolling Stones, in 1975



1. If You Can't Rock Me
2. Ain't Too Proud To Beg
3. It's Only Rock 'N Roll (But I Like It)
4. Till The Next Goodbye
5. Time Waits For No One
6. Luxury Listen Listen
7. Dance Little Sister
8. If You Really Want To Be My Friend
9. Short And Curlies
10. Fingerprint File

Actually, that was the first record I had ever bought for myself. A couple of years earlier, I had bought the Stones’ Let It Bleed for my brother as a Christmas gift.



1. Let It Bleed
2. Love In Vain
3. Midnight Rambler
4. Gimmie Shelter
5. You Got The Silver
6. You Can't Always Get What You Want
7. Live With Me
8. Monkey Man
9. Country Honk


Starting a record collection of my own at that point was really something very important, because it was getting riskier and riskier for me to listen to my brother’s records went he wasn’t at home. He didn’t want me to, because he was afraid (with some justification) that I would scratch them.

One day I accidentally left out his copy of Idlewild South, by the Allman Brothers, and he threatened to knock me out if it ever happened again.



1. Revival
2. Don't Keep Me Wonderin'
3. Midnight Rider
4. In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed
5. Hoochie Coochie Man
6. Please Call Home
7. Leave My Blues At Home

So, it became necessary to buy my own discs… I’m ashamed to say that the second record I bought myself was ‘Kiss Alive”, but hey, don’t laugh… “I want to Rock and Roll All Night’ has held up very well over the years.

Are Big Families Making A Comeback?

In this morning’s Boston Sunday Globe, there was an article called:

Full House (Honey, Let’s Have a Third. And a Fourth. And…) The big family makes a comeback.

The article focuses on a trend in a tony Boston suburb where the size of the average family has been steadily increasing, and offers speculation on whether a big family has become a sort of status symbol for the wealthy, or if the motivations are healthier. Some excerpts…

…look at classroom No. 8 at the Wellesley Nursery School in the Hills. DeMatteo's daughter is the only one who comes from a family of six kids. But Laurel is one of five. So is Mark. Then there are Ryan, Jack, Andrew, and Adam, who each come from a family with four kids. Shane will join their ranks when his new sister arrives in a few months. Right now, he's in the three-kid camp with Lucy, Nicole, and Natalie. In fact, of the class's 20 preschoolers, 12 come from families with three or more kids. And let's not forget Owen. He is one of eight, and his father says a ninth is likely. Definitely don't want to forget Owen…
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(Newton-Wellesley Pediatrician Dr. Jim) Goldston has his own theories about why so many families are getting bigger. A decade or two ago, couples watching college costs escalate figured they had no choice but to limit family size. However, as costs continued to rise to absurd levels, he says many decided, "It's so expensive having two kids, how much worse can it be with three?"
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On the flip side are the wealthy parents in his practice "who can afford to do whatever they want." Some of these couples find that of all the luxuries their bank balances allow them, they get no greater satisfaction than from their kids, so they decide to have more. There's something rather reassuring about that. Other motivations are less reassuring. "For some people in Wellesley," says Goldston, "having four kids has become the new status symbol, like having a luxury SUV. It says you can afford it; you can have a nanny to help you out."

Traditionally, the third child has been a major barrier to both parents working full time, considering that the combined day-care costs can eat up an entire salary. So three kids are more common in families in which one parent -- usually the mother -- is at home full time or has flexible part-time work. For all the talk in recent years of women "opting out" of careers to stay at home, half of all mothers still return to the workforce before their child's first birthday, says Kathleen Gerson, a sociology professor at New York University and board member of the Council on Contemporary Families. Not that there aren't lots of stay-at-home moms. It's just that they're mostly clustered at the top and bottom of the income scale. The poorer moms' job opportunities are so bleak that many don't feel they are giving up much to stay home. Many of the more affluent moms started out with the expectation that they could have it all, managing a successful career with one or two kids. But after experiencing the all-too-common work-family bind, they can walk away from the job without bringing financial pain to their families. In fact, Gerson says, "wealthy mothers are left without one of the major cultural rationales for choosing to work: that they need to."

Once these high-achieving women make the decision to stay home, the next one -- to have more kids -- is easier. After all, managing a bigger family can be a lot like managing an enterprise, with schedules and budgets and direct reports (of the offspring and household-help varieties).

Judy Heffernan left a good job in sales for the Four Seasons Hotel when she started having kids. She grew up in a family of six children, and she now has four of her own, ranging in age from 2 to 9. She wouldn't have it any other way. In fact, at 44, she says she would have had more kids had she not started so late. "It's like having a team."

Because affluent families can afford to hire nannies or au pairs (and don't have to fret about the prospect of another college tuition), the decision to go for the next child doesn't have to be as intimidating. "Every person I know who has four kids has full-time help," says Susan Morris, a 40-year-old former investment banker and current Wellesley mother of three. "People in this town like to have a lot of kids, but they don't necessarily like to raise them by themselves." Morris's husband would like to have a fourth, and seeing so many bigger families around her, she's felt some pressure to try to keep up. "If all your friends are having four, does that make you more likely to do it? Absolutely." But after having three kids in three years, she feels she is just starting to get her life back under control.

Here is where I have to stop the presses a bit. We live in the same town this article was written about. We have six. Our neighbors and good friends down the street have five. Our other friends down the street have four. Another family around the corner have four...

None of us have nannies. None of us live in huge houses. We all have modified Cape houses. My wife knows some of the people mentioned in the article. Curious that the Globe doesn’t want to talk to any of us, but it’s just as well. All of our back yards put together barely have 100 blades of grass between them. The dirt in our back yards is as hard and packed as the streets of Kabul. Kids can always get dirty when they play outside, but when they play at our place they get really dirty. Our place may have made a poor backdrop for a photo shoot. :-)

Memorial Day: Hallowed Ground

Lincoln's Address at Gettysburg, 1863

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final restingplace for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Major General Logan's proclamation of Memorial Day

The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country and during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

Carmelite Spirituality for Amateurs

I really like this image of St. John of the Cross. It was painted by Pauline Martin, who was the older sister of “The Little Flower”, St. Therese of Lisieux . Not bad for an amateur painter, is it?

Pauline actually entered the Carmelite convent of Lisieux before Therese did, and she became the prioress. Maybe someone can help me out with the Latin words on it… I think they are a reference to the story in which St John of the Cross had a vision while praying in front of a painting of Christ. In the vision Christ asked “What do you wish from me?” St John answered “To suffer for you.”

I’m a great admirer of the great Discalced Carmelite mystics and Doctors of the Church. I admire the spirituality of St. John of the Cross in particular, even though some of what he wrote is hard to understand.

I thoroughly enjoy reading St Teresa of Avila and St Therese as well, although as a male, I find some of their references to Jesus as lover (especially by Therese) a little unsettling, and hard to relate to.

The popular spiritual writer Fr. Ron Rolheiser knows a lot about Carmelite spirituality, and writes about it in a way that is very accessible and easy for the “amateur” to understand. Here are some really good articles he’s written that are available in PDF format. They are worth taking a look at.

John of the Cross: The Man, The Myth and The Truth

John of the Cross and Human Development: The Dark Night of the Soul - A Contemporary Interpretation

Our Perennial Fascination with Therese of Lisieux

Key Elements in Therese's Spirituality: The Little Way, Noticing the Unnoticed Drops of Blood

On the less serious side, here is an old Connection radio program with Chris Lydon about St Teresa of Avila as saint, businesswoman, and feminist icon.

Greeley on Poland: Does affluence trump traditionalism?

In Fr. Andrew Greeley's column last Friday, he described the state of the Church in Poland, and remarked on that country's newly found affluence. He touches on a certain hunch I've always had...

In certain European countries where the most traditionalist brand of Catholicism had held sway, there has been a strong, anti-clerical popular reaction against the Church and in favor of consumerism once political freedoms were granted and economic prosperity started to take hold after decades of stagnation and privation. It happened in Spain in the 1980s, Ireland in the 1990s, and now Poland in the 2000s.

The Tridentine-style Church was built to withstand Protestantism. It was somewhat suited to withstand Modernism and Communism. Can it withstand affluence? As always, Greeley remains an optimist...

I've heard it said that the late pope was heartbroken that his native land had sunk so quickly into the swamp of American consumerism. But once the restraints of socialism were swept away, people began to seek the good life for themselves and their children. Americans are in fact the most generous people in the world (in terms of hours volunteering and contributions). It takes time to learn restraint after the first burst of freedom. If religious leaders would stop condemning and instead offer a spirituality for abundance, they would be taken more seriously.

Poles are 10 percent of the Catholics in Europe and perhaps half of the regular churchgoers. But like everyone else in the Church after the blundered implementation of the Vatican Council, they are Catholics on their own terms. This independence will be hard for the clergy and the hierarchy to accept, but they'd better get used to it. There is little in the history of this country to lead one to expect that its bishops and priests will suddenly become open, transparent, pragmatic. They will lose their formidable power just as the Irish clerisy did when it hung on to power too long. The Poles, like the Irish, will remain Catholic. And like the Irish, the Catholic leadership in this country will lose most of its credibility.

Baghdad ER – The Cost of War

Here is last Friday’s On Point radio program, hosted by Tom Ashbrook, on the HBO special Baghdad ER, which will be broadcast tonight and on Memorial Day. It’s a documentary about the doctors and medics working on American and Iraqi casualties in Baghdad.

The On Point program was powerful and very difficult to listen to (for example, a prayer by a chaplain over a marine that the doctors had labored to save for over 13 hours), but I feel that more Americans need to listen to it, or to see the HBO program. Almost 2,500 American troops have been killed in Iraq. Almost 18,000 have been wounded. The deaths and injuries suffered by Iraqi civilians are much higher and difficult to calculate. It’s important to note that the number of dead would be much, much higher if not for the expert care at the trauma units. Over 90% of the casualties delivered to them survive.

I’m currently in the process of struggling with the Just War Theory, and whether a just war is even possible with today’s weapons and technology. I have close friends who support the war in Iraq. In all honesty and candor, they haven’t known me over the years as a dove. I also have close friends who do not support the war. I think that most of the people who’ve been looking at this blog are emphatically and unequivocally against it. I bought into the WMD and Al Qaeda-connection hype. I supported the action against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I have admiration for those serve in uniform. I admire their discipline, their dedication, and their ethos of selflessness and loyalty. I hate to see them ill-used, as when they are driven around Iraq in humvees like ducks in a gallery, waiting for IED’s to take them out. I look at the Honor the Fallen casualty list every day. It is an endless litany… “So and so was killed in Anbar province when an improvised explosive device detonated under his vehicle”. What a waste.

Although I have always admired the principle of non-violence, I have not always held to the position that it was a practical ideal in reality. I've always believed that although war is never a good thing, it sometimes is regrettably necessary to protect the innocent. I've also held that fascism needs to be actively resisted whenever it arises.

I am starting to wonder however, if the time has come to change my views on that. The world cannot continue going the way it is going, both in economic terms and with the consensus on non-proliferation falling apart. We cannot kill our way out of the current problem. I'm a bit conflicted right now.

For those who support the war in Iraq, I think they should at least accept this fact if there is a necessary war on terror: Iraq was a tactical mistake. The neo-con team, and Dick Cheney in particular, were sold on taking a big risk on Iraq by academics like Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami. The president seems to think that all you have to do is introduce elections and free-trade zones into a region like this, and that inside every one of these people a red-white-and-blue-born-again-christian will struggle to get out. Generals and politicians always fight the last war. This team did not realize how much the Middle East has been radicalized since 1991.

We went into Viet Nam with a good army and came out with a bad one. Even if you support the war, you have to admit that we are running the same risk here. We are going to use these wonderful men and women up. They are bearing this burden alone. The president does not have this country on a war footing. No sacrifice has been asked of anyone other than to keep on shopping. In the meantime, men who’ve lost feet or taken shrapnel behind their eyes have been returning to combat duty for another tour. It isn’t right.

Twenty-Five Years ago Today...

...I graduated from college.

How could it possibly be that long? It feels like yesterday. It's amazing how time goes by so quickly. What have I done with my life? Have I accomplished anything worthwhile?

Well, if my professional and academic achievements haven't exactly been overwhelming, there are at least the great little ones that I'm doing my best to help raise. I am very proud of them.
And of course, I mustn't forget their lovely mom...

These guys can’t possibly go to jail for long enough…

I suppose this shows a lack of Christian charity on my part, but I think Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling deserve to go to prison for a long, long time.

Or maybe I’m just grumpy this week on account of the weather... Nah.

It is in the hands of the jury now, and there is no guarantee that they will be found guilty at all. The HealthSouth CEO was able to beat the rap against all expectations, so you never know. You never can tell what a jury will do.

Just speaking personally, this Enron company had a pretty big impact on my life. Their massive lobbying campaign to push for nationwide deregulation of the electricity industry (which has had no positive impact for the average consumer, and caused absolute havoc in California) caused my job to get outsourced, their financial meltdown put a big dent in my savings portfolio, and their lying and connivance with the Andersen auditors means I have to spend endless hours writing documentation to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. This is all nothing, however, to what they did to ruin the lives of a lot of people, not the least of whom were their own employees. I mean they really, REALLY ruined some people’s lives.

Yes, they should go away for a long time, and not to some cream-puff CEO country-club prison. If they are found guilty, is secure-max (with Zacharias Moussaoui) unfair to ask for?

Has history been unfair to Savonarola?

Execution of Girolamo Savonarola on the Piazza della Signoria, Florence 1498

Speaking of books, here is a new one that looks like it is worth reading:

Fire in the City : Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence by Lauro Martines

Anne and I went to Italy on our honeymoon, and one of the cities where we spent the longest amount of time was Florence. Visiting the old Dominican Friary there to look at the works of Fra Angelico, we were struck by how important a figure Savonarola was in Florence on the eve of the Reformation, both to the Dominican Order, and to the city. His name has always been a catchword for fanaticism and puritanism, best known and exemplified by “The Bonfire of the Vanities”. There has been a small counter-current, however, that has always seen Savonarola as a reformer. Lauro Martines seems to be one who thinks so too.

The Book Description from Amazon:

A gripping and beautifully written narrative that reads like a novel, Fire in the City presents a compelling account of a key moment in the history of the Renaissance, illuminating the remarkable man who dominated the period, the charismatic Savonarola. Lauro Martines, whose decades of scholarship have made him one of the most admired historians of Renaissance Italy, here provides a remarkably fresh perspective on Girolamo Savonarola, the preacher and agitator who flamed like a comet through late fifteenth-century Florence. The Dominican friar has long been portrayed as a dour, puritanical demagogue who urged his followers to burn their worldly goods in "the bonfire of the vanities." But as Martines shows, this is a caricature of the truth--the version propagated by the wealthy and powerful who feared the political reforms he represented.

In fact, Savonarola emerges as a complex and subtle man: compassionate, wise, a poet and scholar, and even, at critical moments, a force for moderation. The friar, a mesmerizing preacher, set the city afire with his message of Christian charity wedded to republican ideals.

It is this reality--of Savonarola as both religious and civic leader--that Martines captures in all its complexity, showing how he inspired an outpouring of political debate in a city newly freed from the tyranny of the Medici. In the end, the volatile passions he unleashed--and the powerful families he threatened--sent the friar to his own fiery death. But the fusion of morality and politics that he represented would leave a lasting mark on Renaissance Florence.

So many books, and so little time… and money.

In contrast to that, Here is what the Catholic Encyclopedia says about Savonarola.

In the beginning Savonarola was filled with zeal, piety, and self-sacrifice for the regeneration of religious life. He was led to offend against these virtues by his fanaticism, obstinacy, and disobedience. He was not a heretic in matters of faith. The erection of his statue at the foot of Luther's monument at Worms as a reputed "forerunner of the Reformation" is entirely unwarranted.

Enough already, with this silly book and movie

Man, have I gotten sick and tired of hearing about The Da Vinci Code.

I know the movie is coming out, but for crying out loud, this book was written years ago. In the meantime, there has been a whole cottage industry built around various Da Vinci Code boosters and Da Vinci Code rebutters. Will it ever end? Why is the Church finally deciding that it needs to come out and start talking about it now? Do they figure more people go to the movies than read? They may be right.

Gnosticism seems to be in vogue these days. Margaret Starbird, Elaine Pagels, The Gospel of Judas... I finally forced myself to read the book about a year ago because it had gotten to the point where you couldn’t talk about it with anyone without hearing the question “Well, have you actually read it yet?” Supposedly, you’d be so bowled over by the evidence in this book that you had no credibility speaking about Church history unless you had actually taken the time to read it.

My impression: It was certainly written in a style that was designed to keep you moving. Every chapter was written with a little hook near the end, so that you were supposed to hang on to get to the next chapter in order to get to that “punch”. I was constantly thinking to myself, “Brown has written this book with a clear view to having it converted to a screenplay". It reads more like a movie storyboard script than a novel.

Dan Brown spent a lot of time speaking about Osiris, perfect proportions, and various pagan myths and symbols, and I was never clear on why this all had anything to do with Jesus. Some of it was really strange and illogical. Take Sunday as “Sun-day” for example. It may be “Sun-day” in English. It certainly wasn’t called “Sun-day” in Greek or Latin. As for all the pagan symbols incorporated into Christianity, this should come as no surprise or scandal to anyone. Christianity has always “baptized” what was good and useful in the cultures it encountered. Nowadays it is called “enculturation”, and no one is particularly scandalized by it. Besides, you can go on forever playing that pagan-influence game. If you really want to, you can go all the way back with Judaism and debate whether or not it was all infected up with Zoroasterism, Canaanite beliefs, and Babylonian epics.

Speaking of Judaism, Brown leaves it out almost completely. Reading this book, you’d hardly know that Jesus was a Jew. There’s no mention of St. Paul whatsoever, and for all the talk of the lost sense of the sacred feminine, why doesn't he mention the Cult of the Virgin Mary? What does he call that? The whole Jesus-Mary Magdalene marriage story sounds pretty clearly to me like it originated with one particular French family that wanted to legitimize its claim to royal heritage over that of rival claimants by trying to prove a line of descent back to Jesus. That, of course, leads to the big question for Brown. If Jesus was merely "royal", and not "divine", why should any of us care who Mary Magdalene was carrying in her womb?

Regarding Opus Dei… Brown seems to consider Opus Dei an ultra-right-wing Catholic organization. Is that so? Has Brown ever heard of the SSPX? They make Opus Dei look like Call To Action. They might have made better villains for him.

Not a very good thriller in my opinion, and not scholarship at all. If there was a relationship that Jesus had that was underplayed in the New Testament at all, it wasn’t the relationship between Jesus and SAINT Mary Magdalene. It was the relationship between Jesus and St. James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, the “brother of the Lord”.

The Jeanne Jugan Juniors

(Photo courtesy of Christine Williams for the Boston Pilot)

I'm very, very proud of my daughters and the daughters of my close friends. They are called the Jeanne Jugan Juniors and they volunteer once a month to work with the elderly and to keep them company at the residence run by the Little Sisters of the Poor in Somerville, MA.

They are covered and quoted in this article in the Boston Pilot.

Cardinal O'Malley seeks to improve Jewish-Christian relations

This article was in today's Boston Globe:

Quotes:

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley and leaders of the Jewish community are attempting to reinvigorate efforts to build Catholic-Jewish relations, following a period of moral and financial troubles in the church...

''The Catholic Church comes out of the Jewish religion; the church is the daughter of the synagogue," he said. ''The Mass, which is the center of our spiritual life, is basically a synagogue service and a Seder meal brought together. . . . Christianity and Catholicism can be understood only in light of our Hebrew roots."

O'Malley said that he draws inspiration for his effort from Pope John Paul II, who by personal acts -- praying at Jerusalem's Western Wall, visiting Rome's central synagogue and the death camp at Auschwitz, recognizing the state of Israel -- improved Catholic-Jewish relations dramatically.

The late pope ''saw the 20th century as the century of the Shoah," O'Malley said. ''He encouraged Catholics to come to grips with the meaning of the Holocaust."

Amen, Cardinal. Well said.

The Church in China. Remembering the first Maryknoll missioners.

Last week, NPR ran this story on the decision by the “ Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association Church” to ordain two bishops without at least the tacit approval of the Holy See. The bishops were excommunicated automatically under Church law. Pope Benedict was reported to have been very upset by the consecrations, especially since he had been speaking hopefully about visiting China in the near future, and about the possibility of re-establishing diplomatic relations at some point. As an aside, anyone who thinks that a lifting of the excommunications is in the cards any day now for the SSPX bishops who were excommunicated in 1988 for their illegal consecrations might be sobered by this news. It seems that Pope Benedict is just as serious about his sole responsibility for episcopal ordinations as his predecessor.

The relationship between the Vatican and Communist China has been complicated. In some ways, certain compromises and practical steps have been made to avoid open schism. One group that has come under criticism from traditionalist circles is the Maryknoll Fathers. Since 1991, they have been running a program to train Chinese seminarians, some of whom are in the persecuted Church operating underground, but also many who are in the “Patriotic” Church officially sanctioned by the Chinese government. The Maryknolls have a special connection to China.

The Maryknoll Fathers (Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America) were started specifically as a vehicle for Americans to do missionary work, with the goal of evangelizing China being foremost in their plans.

Shown in the photo, seated left to right, are Fr. James E. Walsh, Fr. Thomas F. Price, and Fr. Francis X. Ford. Standing in the rear is Fr. Bernard F. Meyer. These four missioners left for China in 1918.

Fr. Thomas F. Price was one of the founders of the order. Being somewhat older than the others, he had difficulty learning Chinese, and was not in the most robust of health. He died of complications associated with a ruptured appendix in Hong Kong in 1919.

Fr. James E. Walsh and Fr. Francis X. Ford both became notable figures for their work in China and became bishops. When the Communist takeover of China occurred in 1949, the most brutal persecutions did not take place immediately. In 1951, during Holy week, an order came down evicting all foreign missionaries from China. The bishops in place suffered a more grim fate.

Bishop Walsh was put under house arrest for seven years, and for refusing to leave China, he was imprisoned from 1958 through 1970, when he was finally released during a thaw in US-Chinese relations that occurred shortly before Nixon’s visit to China.

A quote from Bishop Walsh:

"The task of a missioner is to go to the place where he is not wanted to sell a pearl whose value, although of great price, is not recognized, to people who are determined not to accept it, even as a gift”.

Bishop Ford was treated horribly, paraded through the streets and beaten viciously. He is thought to have died in 1952.

Quotes regarding Bishop Ford:

”The hardest cross to bear in life is the thought that we are wasting our time, that we are useless, that the world is rushing along and we, apparently, have not yet found our feet.... God needs us where we are.... We are only too prone to look for sensible consolations in our mission work.... The remedy for this self-centered condition is contemplation and service of God. Contemplation takes us out of ourselves and focuses our attention on God; service of God instinctively issues from our contemplation (Francis X. Ford in "God Needs Us” - Stone in the King's Highway).

“In Communist China, Bishop Francis Xavier Ford, a Catholic missionary who had spent over 30 years serving the Chinese, was tortured and brainwashed for 11 months. Fellow prisoners later reported that the mistreatment was so severe that Ford was on the verge of forgetting his own identity and was only able to hang on to it by repeating to himself: “My name is Francis Xavier Ford.” In spite of everything, he did not crack. It appears that he died around February 1952. We are not sure because word of his death only leaked out about six months later. He must have persevered to the end, though, because the Communist Chinese would otherwise have made a public spectacle out of his recantation”. (Heroes Of Faith Hero: Does Religion Hinder Heroes? by Robert Royal)

In 2001, a story appeared in Commonweal, written by Sister Mary Carita Pendergast of the Sisters of Charity, called At Bayonet Point. It tells of the expulsions during Holy week of 1951.

When we disembarked, we were immediately surrounded by women soldiers who subjected us to a thorough and embarrassing search, and then led us to a double line of our own high school girls armed with sticks. We were ordered to run through this gauntlet and at the end to kneel and to apologize to the Chinese people for our offenses against them. Eight of us made it without hurt, for the girls would not raise their sticks. The last of our party was Sister Loretta Halligan, who refused to enter the double line. At that point, a soldier whispered to me, "Tell Sister Halligan to run the gauntlet, or she will be severely punished." I hastened to where she stood and whispered, "Run the gauntlet and at the end apologize for your errors with the Chinese." Her Irish blue eyes blazed with indignation and she exclaimed, "I crossed two oceans to serve these people. I never harmed anyone." I argued, "Come on, Loretta. Neither did the rest of us ever harm the people. But we have all run safely through the gauntlet, and apologized, for we certainly did make some mistakes." Sister Loretta was our superior, and in her misery and anxiety hadn't seen what was happening to the rest of us. She thought she was being singled out as our leader. Finally, she too went safely through the gauntlet.

The next morning, we were ordered to report to the Alien Registration Bureau, but our progress was halted for more than an hour by a demonstration against foreigners, during which Maryknoll Bishop Francis X. Ford, who later died in prison, and his secretary, Sister Joan, were paraded in a truck to the jeers of the bystanders. This we witnessed before entering the bureau, where further rough treatment awaited us.

I was proud to see Sister Loretta get her Irish up, in spite of it all. It's always important to remember those who give everything and are ready to lay down their lives for the Faith.

The Immigration Controversy: Part II. How I found out that I was a member of the overclass.

Somehow, without my even realizing it, I discovered that I “fell” into the overclass.

We’ve had 6 children in 13 years of marriage, and as you can well imagine, my wife’s life is a very busy one. A few years back, she asked if she could, on an irregular basis, have a Brazilian woman with her own cleaning business come in every once in a while with her maids to help keep the place clean (I am not commenting on the woman’s status). She’d heard from a friend that this woman and her crew did a great job.

I hated the idea. It goes so against the grain of the way that I was brought up, that even the mere thought of it was jarring. I’m a guy who still thinks that people who play golf should probably have a yacht and a polo pony too. Us, with a maid? I retain my own grandparent’s immigrant mentality to a fault. Having vestiges left over of that mentality, I am uncomfortable having someone doing that kind of servile work for me. I don’t like that kind of pampering. I don’t even like it when a waiter or a retail sales clerk is hovering over me unless I ask them to. I get squeamish about the idea of a stranger coming in, working over our toilets, stripping down our beds, and going through the things on top of my dresser (my biggest pet peeve… I can never find where they put anything). Our mess is our mess. Like many husbands, though, I am hen-pecked enough to know that arguing this point was not going to be in my best interest. So… the maids came in while we could afford it. Wonderful young ladies.

Therefore, it was with some chagrin, when I read Michael Lind’s 'Up from Conservatism', that I discovered that I was a member of the “overclass”. Shown below, from pages 36-38 of that book, Lind describes what the overclass is, and how the crisis in illegal immigration in this country came to be. I think the analysis is pretty solid.

Here, then, is a simple test of overclass status. Americans who do not have advanced degrees and cannot afford maids or nannies are middle class; Americans who have advanced degrees and can afford maids or nannies are overclass. It's as simple as that.

The "nanny question" shows the extent to which American public policy reflects the interests of the American overclass, in direct opposition to the desires of the American majority. Since the 1960s, according to every poll, a substantial majority of Americans has favored the restriction or ending of legal immigration. It is often said that middleclass opposition to immigration is a recent phenomenon that reflects frustration with stagnating wages. This is simply not true...

Even so, the consensus position of the conservative establishment remains one favoring high, or even increased, immigration. The editors of the Wall Street journal have gone so far as to call for a five-word constitutional amendment- "There shall be open borders" -that would permit hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of impoverished people from the Third World to resettle at will in the United States. Neoliberals like Bill Clinton support a policy of high immigration. So do many left-liberals. The political, intellectual, and journalistic elites of the United States are almost unanimously in favor of maintaining the present immigration regime in which there is a constant influx of low-wage labor from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia into the United States, at a rate of approximately a million legal immigrants a year.

Why is a high immigration policy opposed by most middle-class Americans but favored by almost all members of the overclass of all persuasions-left, right, and center? I discovered the answer after publishing a book in which I argued for reducing immigration levels in order to raise wages among unskilled workers in the United States. Friends and acquaintances of mine of various political viewpoints, all of them highly educated and affluent members of the overclass by my definition, found elements of my argument convincing. From both liberals and conservatives, however, I heard a similar complaint: "I don't agree with your idea about restricting immigration, though. We need our nanny!" In every case, it turned out that the objecting individual and his or her spouse paid a maid or nanny from Latin America or the Caribbean to look after their children while both parents worked at professional jobs. Take away the elaborate moral arguments of the overclass left for immigration, and the equally elaborate economic rationales of the overclass right, and what remains is the naked economic interest in maintaining a supply of poorly paid, nonunionized foreign women whose labor permits overclass parents of all political persuasions to enjoy a lifestyle like that of the aristocrats of the past with their nannies and governesses.

The continued access by affluent overclass families to poor Latin American and Caribbean domestic workers by means of a generous immigration policy is not the only issue that divides the overclass (left, right, and center) from the middle class (left, right, and center). Free trade is another. The right to unionize is another (supposedly "liberal" newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times are more liberal when the subject is a racial minority or an endangered species than in the case of unionized, blue-collar workers). The economic interests shared by the left, right, and center members of the overclass explain the fact that controversy about social issues, since the 1960s, has been accompanied by a curious consensus on economic issues among elites across the political spectrum.

The Immigration Controversy: Part I. What did people expect?

I know it isn’t the right attitude, but I have to admit that I’m somewhat bemused over this whole immigration flap.




A couple of caveats:

1) I recognize that some kind of globalization is necessary. It is a scandal and a sin that most of the people in the world live on less than a couple of dollars a day. We all need to help to lift them out of that poverty, but it shouldn’t be done the way it is being done now, with the weakest and most vulnerable being forced into a race to the bottom so that a relative few can live in 4,000 square foot houses.

2) I am in favor of legal immigration. It has always been the nation’s life-blood. We should welcome the stranger. For those who are already here illegally, I think that we need to do something to normalize their status. For those who have not arrived yet, but are sure to do so, I honestly don’t know what can be done. I bear no animosity towards anyone for their race, color, ethnicity, or national origin, although I am not above joking or wisecracking about them, just as I would regarding people of my own ethnicity. We all need to be able to laugh at ourselves.

For years I have been railing on and on to anyone who would listen about outsourcing and offshoring. I live less than 20 miles from where I work, and I work with foreigners all day, onshore and offshore. Very nice fellows for the most part. Skilled and hard-working. I see and interact more with foreigners every day than I do with my own friends and neighbors.

Not one of them is the slightest bit interested in being an American.

The company I work for is sending work overseas as fast as it possibly can, and the scope of work that is being done offshore is climbing higher and higher up the skill chain. The company eyes my position like a hungry hawk, waiting for the day that I have finally dug my own grave deep enough so that they can throw me into it and replace me with someone offhsore…. While there’s a war on. I’ve seen guys in their 40’s and 50’s pushed out this way, and I’ve seen them fall into a sort of abyss. It is a constant challenge to stay educated, keep moving and find ways to “add value”. Most of this lament falls on deaf ears. If you go on about this, you’re considered a baby. A protectionist. A socialist. An “economic girlie-man”. I hear:

“That’s just the free market. It works better for everyone in the long term”.

“Stop your whining… You work for a Fortune 500 company, live in a nice suburb, and own two SUV’s. What’s going to happen to you? Nothing.”.

And so on… I’ve largely come to terms with it over the last few years. I know that I probably couldn’t survive a learned economic debate over it. I suppose it just doesn’t resonate with people until it comes to the day that it threatens their own jobs. I admit that I never really cared when it affected auto and textile workers.

What I am describing happens at the corporate level with the closest cooperation with the government. It enjoys this administration’s heartiest encouragement. The Democrats are hardly any different. As far as I’m concerned, illegal immigration is the same syndrome, also coming from that level, but coming up as a groundswell from the bottom as well.

There is only one reason why most illegal immigrants are here. It is because people want to hire them. If you want to “blame” anyone, don’t blame the illegal immigrant. He's just trying to make a living. If there is anyone to blame at all, the blame lies on the rest of us.

This country has an insatiable, voracious appetite for cheap, disposable labor (it has in the past, and would in the future, try to get way with free labor if it could). Conversely, it has no tolerance for inflation. From the boardrooms of the biggest corporations, to the smallest of businesses, to the kitchens of the suburban wife, it is the same need.

Of all the folks who call talk-radio screaming about illegal immigration, I wonder how many of them:

- Eat meat and chicken processed by Tyson, where the slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants are staffed by illegal Mexican immigrants.

- Eat fruit picked by illegal Guatemalan immigrants.

- Hire "Mike’s Landscaping service", with the crews made of illegals from El Salvador.

- Hire "Pat’s Painting", with painters here illegally from Panama.

- Hire "Bob’s Construction", with plasterers here illegally from Ireland.

- Hire undocumented nannies from Sweden or the Dominican Republic.

- Hire undocumented cleaning ladies from Brazil.

Globalization cheerleaders like Tom Friedman are always telling us now that the world is flat, and that we need to be ready to compete globally in this new economy. It makes you wonder in the long run what the benefits of citizenship will be. If the corporations aren't watching our backs, and the government isn't watching our backs, is anyone? National borders are taking on less significance and are gradually disappearing. Well, if the laws are being changed so that capital and corporations can easily flow across national borders, why are we surprised when workers take it upon their initiative to do the same thing?

Yes, we have lost control over our own borders, which is a very dangerous thing in a time of war, but under the prevailing philosophy in which we run our economy, it was entirely predictable and inevitable. What did people expect?

Next, how I became a member of the "overclass".

The man who revitalizes parishes

Every once in a while we attend Mass at St Clement’s Eucharistic Shrine in Boston, which is run by the Oblates of the Virgin Mary. It isn’t our home parish, but we have a family connection to the order through my wife’s cousin. They present the liturgy reverently and beautifully. Last week, on the dotCommoneal blog, there was a reference to Rev. Peter Grover OMV in an entry called “The Vineyard of Parish Life". Fr. Grover usually celebrates the Sunday evening Mass at St. Clement’s. The blog makes reference to an article called "Unleashing the Laity" in Godspy. (never mind the comments of the naysayers at the bottom).

I’ve seen Fr. Grover many times myself, and have been impressed enough to include links to his homilies and reflections on this blog. Whatever this guy has, they ought to bottle it. St Clement’s is right across the street from the Berklee College of Music, which attracts students who tend to be on the avant-garde side. It is quite a sight to walk into a Sunday evening Mass at St. Clement’s and to see the Church completely full of young people, colorful haircuts and all. They attend from Berklee, Northeastern, Emerson, BU, and other schools in the area in big numbers. After Mass, Fr.Grover always has a huge line of people standing in line to speak with him.

When you merely listen to Fr. Grover’s homilies, it is hard to get the full effect. You really need to see them. Slightly stooped with mussed bed-head hair, his homilies build to a sort of crescendo, he gets more and more emotional, and just when you think he is about to lose it, he brings it back down again. The thing is, it isn’t a gimmick. It isn’t theatrics. He’s as self-effacing as they come and he is the real deal, and the students know it. They can feel his passion and authenticity. Some quotes about why he has been successful and what he believes is required:

You've got to give people environments where they can talk about their faith," Fr. Peter says. "Normally, the priest does all the talking. He gets all the fun because he gets to talk about the faith, which is the greatest thing. But a lay person, he never gets to talk about the faith. You go to work, you can't talk about the faith—there you talk about the football game, politics. Maybe you go home and your wife and kids aren't interested. Where can you talk about the faith? It's the best thing in your life and you can't talk about it to anybody."


We talked about why so many pastors seem afraid of entrusting teaching responsibilities—particularly adult catechesis and ongoing spiritual formation—to lay leadership. Fr. Peter didn't want to generalize, but he attributed the problem to a lingering clericalism—"Don't talk about the faith," he said, spoofing these attitudes, "just shut up and listen, and I'll tell you what the faith is."

Then he introduced a truly radical and hopeful notion: he thinks that the religious vocation crisis in the Western European Church today is being used by the Holy Spirit to correct the clericalism of the past. The clergy and the laity must now join in a true evangelistic partnership in which the clergy and religious focus on feeding the people and the people bring the world to Christ. "God's running the Church, hang in there," he told me, gently chiding my pessimism. "God's doing a good job, He's directing the Church to where it's going."

Jim Brown, the greatest lacrosse player of all time

A lot of people are aware that Jim Brown was a stellar fullback for the Cleveland Browns who racked up 12,312 career rushing yards between the years 1957 and 1965. He was an anomaly in his time, standing head-and-shoulders far above his peers in terms of power and speed. Defensive players from that era have pointed out time and again that when you tackled Jim Brown, he hurt you a lot more than you hurt him.

What a lot of people may not know is that in his time at Syracuse University, in addition to being a football standout, he was also an All-American lacrosse star… In fact, he is widely regarded as the greatest lacrosse player of all time.

My friend and co-worker Harvey suggests to me that it was a shame that the guys on the Duke lacrosse team never encountered Jim Brown on their schedule. You know, it’s a hard point to to argue with, so this one’s for you Harvey.