The Hallelujah Chorus

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about a couple of kids from Saint Paul. Basil and Josephine. One hundred years late, I lived in his neighborhood. The stories in this setting seemed very real. Amidst the Victorian mansions out the window. I had an excitement in reading his stories.

Realness of the story. Wealth. Lost Generation. Lost Wealth. The Promise.

Isaac Newton, in Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, investigated the motion of many physical objects, within the solar system. Newton’s first law is called the law of inertia. Me and 2009. In this economy, it was not so bad. The laws of gravity often cause crashes. From a risk management perspective, I have been safe. A moving object will not change its velocity until a net force acts upon it.

It was 16 years ago. I passed a Bosnian woman in Munich, a refugee who had escaped war torn Yugoslavia in 1993. I gave her some change. She was not happy with my donation. More recently, a young woman in the Philippines who wanted to be home at Christmas asked for $100. A hundred dollars! The human response was to ignore such a request, especially when you could not do anything of significance. There were just too many people claiming need. The internal stress. Too many needs.

Aristotle had taught that heavy objects like rocks wanted to be at rest on the Earth. Galileo’s rock philosophy was that force acting on a body determines acceleration, not velocity. Using Galileo’s rock philosophy, Isaac Newton had come up with his first law; the law of inertia where no force means no acceleration, and hence the body will maintain its velocity. Newton’s second law was that a force applied to a body produces a proportional acceleration. Or more simply, an object that is not moving will not move until a force acts upon it. “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” On Wall Street, this seemed to address why one day those indexes were up. Buyers looking for sellers. In this economy.

Newton’s third law was the law of reciprocal actions. Newton described 329 years ago a relationship between the forces acting on a body and the motion of that body. Was this Newton’ view on his own marriage? F and -F are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. Newton explained whenever a first body exerts a force F on a second body, the second body exerts a force -F on the first body.

The physics. About force, momentum, and position. Real events. Human. Life. This is it. Within the solar system. Today. My position. Me and planetary motion. Centrifugal force and gravity. Where was the world moving? The questioning from the Judaic culture, in the search for answers. The conversation back and forth. The questioning of God in prayer. The Messianic Secret. To keep people in mystery, not understanding identities and what is going on. The excitement.

The physics in my life. Inside forces. Outside forces at work. In my life. With established frames of reference, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. About force, momentum, and position.

Prayer. Have you even been considered to have been in a position of power? When someone thought you could do something to help them? There was no reason to give money to a stranger on the street. You had no way to know how the philanthropy would be spent. If I had enough money to help every passer-by who asked.

To believe that I can still change the world. The excitement about the mystery in the season of excitement. Not much older than Basil and Josphine, I had met a Filipina this week who was a bus trip away from home. Only she was real. She was 18, and she could not afford the $25 to make the trip. Her father had died within the previous 11 months. Yesterday, I gave her $25 to get home. She was stunned.

Christmas. Most of us absolutely desired relationships that stirred something from within.

Real events. Human. Life. The gift of life. Holiness. These people were holy. Or tried to be. Even if for a short time. Amidst all the stresses. Amidst all of the stress of those with whom we shared intimacy.

When the practice is over. For the Hallelujah Chorus. The excitement was now. Words always have significance. About Handel’s Messiah. The Chorus sung. With other who had somehow in this world found the same meaning. Real meaning came when sung with reverence. In an audience that had the same reverence for the meaning. The Hallelujah Chorus. My life has significance. To those who understood, to those who I shared a relationship.

The real. Newton showed the laws of motion, combined with his law of universal gravitation, affected real events. Human life. Amidst all the stresses. Life. The gift of life. Holiness. With other who had somehow in this world found the same meaning These people who tried to be. Even if I was for a short time. Amidst all of the stress of those with whom we shared intimacy. Holiness. Feeling wanted and needed. I had an excitement in this story. About the world out the window, and the Hallelujah Chorus.

Merry Christmas from Saint. Paul, Minnesota.

Now It Came to Pass….

Recognizing deadlines. The realness of the story. The humanness of deadlines. Of starts. Of finishes. My battle with time.

Human wants. Human needs. Divine desires. The divine need; to share something. For others.

The realness of the story. As in any relationship, the sacrifice. The engaging with the world. In the FINITE world. With corruption. There had to be conflict. Any time the human comes in contact with the divine, there had to be conflict.

It was either my teacher in first grade or second grade, a nun, who read us the story: “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.” And so the story began. In one interpretation. The International interpretation. There were other interpretations.

The King James version. “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” It sounded a lot about money.

The English standard version. “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.”

The American version was “Now it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled.”

The Bible in basic English. “Now it came about in those days that an order went out from Caesar Augustus that there was to be a numbering of all the world.” It sounded like the Noah version. Where Noah went looking for mates for each species. Sex mates. The basics.

I never thought about the sex part of life. Or the virgin birth. Not in the first or second grade. Even though the songs made a big deal about it. I did not recognize any miracle in a virgin birth. I was more concerned about the decree. In those days. I think the decree was emphasized to throw the first and second grade kids off. No one in those days knew what exactly the virgin birth was.

Births. The sex part of life. It was why I was here. Sex and birth that is. There was a connection. Who? What? When? Where? And the how?

The decree. By the leader. With a local connection. To enamor a sense of loyalty. From the people. The “how.” To become human.

Starts. Finishes. Not to be recognized. Unknown. So where was God in the story that started about enrollment, registration, numbering? Who? What? When? Where? How? About virgin births. How many even knew?

Wanting to change the world and not be known. Amidst this Roman decree. The decree by a governmental body. Government and power. Over people’s lives. Death and taxes. And births. It all seemed a part of the Christmas story, in the middle of nowhere. In Bethlehem. And God. Not wanting to be recognized.

The decree. The what. With a local connection. The where? And it came to pass in those days. The when. How to teach and explain how to read carefully to young students who demanded relevancy in everything? In a story about starts, which began with a birth. And a virgin birth. It all seemed a part of the Christmas story, that started with the decree. About either enrollment, registration, or numbering. To teach and explain an interpretation. Or a viewpoint. To teach and explain about character, point of view, in order that a viewpoint of the reader might change. That the reader might be changed.

Those Christmas Cards

In the air.

There was something in the air. ..two kids, two jobs, a house, a tenant, a huge extended family — what in “Zorba the Greek” Nikos Kazantzakis had described as “the full catastrophe.”

The “how.” In lives. How it all happens.

About the “how.” There were schools, colleges, to form young men and young women into whatever it was that they and their parents hoped them to “become.”

About how it was now coming along. When the mandates about the total number of credit hours. And the core requirements. And the credit hours to achieve a major. The hours to have a minor. Those core requirements to be identified by a department. Dealing with authority. The Becoming. To know. And to be known. And what then followed after college.

Becoming. The project of becoming. How was it coming along? This year? It was still going on. Outside of school.

About the ‘becoming.’ Marrying. Where people made their own luck. Or it came in the form of a spouse. In a relationship. Optimistic, cocky and vague about the concept of relationship, wrote Elizabeth Weil last week in the New York Times Magazine. Thinking little about the expectations and even less about our parents’ marriages, the long lasting ones. The vow to have and to hold. The vow to love and to cherish. In sickness and in health. There was never a discussion about what a good marriage would mean. There was no school to teach how to have a good union. There was seldom ever a discussion about the reasons for marrying. Or the reasons for being married now.

Union. Elizabeth Weil wrote a piece in the New York Times about her marriage. Her marriage was “utterly central to my existence, yet in no other important aspect of my life was I so laissez-faire. Like most of my peers, I applied myself to school, friendship, work, health and, ad nauseam, raising my children. But in this critical area, marriage, we had all turned away. I wanted to understand why.”

It was her idea to improve her union. The core requirements. She talked about the idea that it was over time that you really became married. Like Abe Lincoln wrote about union which endures. So she asked, “What would a better marriage look like? More intimacy? More intriguing conversation? More laughter?” And then she asked how to reach the goal? Of more happiness? With greater intimacy? Stability? Laughter? More excellent sex? About becoming fully human?

How did it all happen. Living in captivity: like the last of what kind of bird? The project of becoming?

Becoming, and the how. In lives. Dealing with the new mandates. Dealing with authority. Dealing with a spouse. Coming from two different families, with two different concrete examples of marriage. One visible, the other invisible. One oh so very personal experience. About the right way. The visible, the other invisible, with the practical and the impractical. And that was before the idea about the how to raise kids.

The project of the Christmas cards, and reporting about how the becoming was coming along? On the Christmas cards. About the intimacy. Union, not much different than any personal experience of God. With His world. With His people. In friendships. In lives. In love. A personal experience of God. With humility about it all. Thus the Christmas letter instead of the Christmas card. What am I gonna say? About “becoming.” This year?

The how. How are we doing, learning a new perspective? Especially the men. How did we go about learning it all? How to be married? With light and darkness. With God. And the personal appearance of, the personal experience of God? With man and woman. With power. Generated power. In lives?

In the air. The personal experience. Elizabeth Weil wrote, “And as I lay there, I started wondering why I wasn’t applying myself to the project of being a spouse.”

The how. Over time. In friendships. In lives. In love. With God’s world. A personal experience of God? With God’s people. With a humility about it all. The mutual need. For personal experience. And few people thought about how to improve the union. About the need for marriage counseling, with God.

Inheritance with belief: how are we doing? With my religious tradition? With the vow to have and to hold? This generation? Our personal experience. In sickness and in health. With the vow to love and to cherish?

A better union? What were the core requirements? What would a better world look like? With more intimacy? With God?

Institutions are not the wellspring of love that I imagined them to be. At least in the news of religion in 2009. “The full catastrophe.” The icecaps seemed to have revealed some ugliness, after the melting. Or the news this week that Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, executed illegally in the Second Boer War one of the bravest tribal chiefs in Rhodesia, after promising that his life would be spared. The unreported atrocity.

Oh the everyday challenge of love. Learning within the marriage institution. When two people from two homes try to merge their ideas, with two personalities, of what is an appropriate environment for their kids. Based upon scarcity, limits, and human needs. And this is before contemplation of the core requirements for spiritual needs. Weil described what can become “a barbaric competition over whose needs get met” as two people try “to make a go of it on emotional and psychological supplies that are only sufficient for one.” And spouses often assume roles of the adversary. Oh the everyday challenge of love. And the full catastrophe. And too often the Church assumed a role of the adversary, in the name of God.

There was something in the air. Over the air. Christmas music. On the radio. In a secular world. Except for one 36 hour period, the barbaric world did not give God notice. Except for the 36 hours of attitude adjustment.

What am I gonna say this day, before the 36 hour period? On those Christmas cards? What am I gonna say about this year. About the becoming. About the pleasures? About the sacrifice? About Kazantzakis’ described “full catastrophe?”

Christmas movies. Lightning and perspective…..the hero. Who is he? What is he? Why is he? How long does it take at the cinema to recognize which character was the hero?

Thinking great thoughts. Having one great spouse. And writing about it all. Who is she/he? What is she/he? Why is she/he? How long does it take to recognize? How many Christmases?

Real life. Dealing with the spouse. The real. Dealing with authority. The sacrifices. Mutual authority.

Mutual authority. A spouse. The real historical figures in lives. Living history. Who could believe how it all began? In the story. How it all happened. Did your kids believe the chronology, before they arrived? Did they even ask?

The “how.” And wanting to understand the “why.” About the how and why it all happened. In the form of a spouse. In a relationship. Visible. And invisible. With others. With God. And to remember some parts of the story that fit into my current life. The historical part.
The names of historical people. The civil registration of births. Real government. A lot like Pontius Pilate, or Herod. Real governors. As some kind of land posts or mile markers. Where people made their own luck. Where ever we were. This year. This year in history. In union.

The glorious tradition of Christmas cards. The communal nature of life. The communal nature of God. Directives about giving gifts. Out of weakness, not strength. Picking out a charity. The God who focuses so much on sacrifice. God. For the needy.

What would a better world look like? A better union? With another census every ten years, did they ever ask?

It is a wonderful time of year to realize that it is a wonderful life. Jimmy Stewart. How had I changed the world, this year? In the project of becoming. How was it coming along? It is a wonderful time for an attitude adjustment. In the long dark nights where I live. To tell about the two kids, the two jobs, the house, a huge extended family — what was “the full catastrophe.” To write those Christmas cards. When the words became flesh. And what then followed.

T

On Irish Politics and Irish Religion

The Irish Times reported on December 8, 2009 Pope Benedict XVI had invited Cardinal Sean Brady and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin to a meeting on December 11th to discuss “the painful situation” in the Catholic Church in Ireland, per confirmation by a Vatican official. The papal nuncio to Ireland will attend along with senior Vatican Curia figures with specific competence in this area,” according to Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi.

The Irish Times on December 4, 2009 reported that Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said it was discourteous that Papal Nuncio in Ireland did not respond to the two letters sent to him by the Murphy commission in February 2007 and earlier in 2009. The previous reluctance of the Papal Nuncio in Ireland to contribute to the report, and then the delay of one week before finally commenting upon findings of the Murphy commission have led to calls for expulsion of the Papal Nuncio in Ireland. Fine Gael leader in the House, Frances Fitzgerald, said the report of the Murphy commission should mark a defining moment in the relations between church and State. The Papal Nuncio in Ireland has denied ’showing contempt’ for the State institutions by refusing to respond to requests from the Murphy commission for information, according to Ivana Bacik (Labor).

The Vatican, through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, responded to the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, indicating that the communication was not made through the proper channel, he added. In making their requests, the Murphy commission undoubtedly established that it was the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under then prefect Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who took control of issues of sexual abuse by priests sometime around 2001. So the Irish political parties were now in a row over why the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith did not reply.

Replying to Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, the Vatican’s view was, as the commission had been established under government authority through the Department of Justice, such communication should be routed through diplomatic channels and in accordance with international customs, Taoiseach Brian Cowen said. The Holy See’s approach was, according to Taoiseach Brian Cowen, consistent with international law where dealings between states should be conducted via the diplomatic channel unless other arrangements were made by mutual consent. He said that it was not “unreasonable to assume the Holy See was open to responding to a further approach through diplomatic channels” to the Murphy commission investigating clerical child sex abuse in Dublin, according to the Irish Times.

Labor leader Eamon Gilmore said that the reply to Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny by Taoiseach Brian Cowen confirmed that senior figures in the Catholic Church had failed to grasp the urgency of what was at stake, according to the Irish Times.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny asked how it was there was no response from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs to the response from the Vatican that contact had not been made through the correct channel.

Responding to Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin’s expression of “deep disappointment” at the lack of a response by the pope to the Dublin diocesan report, sources inside the Vatican said until the Holy See received a formal complaint from the Government via its diplomatic mission in Rome, a Vatican response would be “inappropriate”.

The Irish Times reported on December 8, 2009 that Vatican insiders say Friday’s meeting is a direct intervention from the Holy See, called by Pope Benedict XVI. The sources reportedly state that the pope will argue the Irish clerical sex-abuse crisis has gone on far too long and will urge Irish church leaders to find a definitive exit from the crisis. Hmmmmmm.

In a related story, The Irish Times reported on December 8, 2009 that in 1991 Father Kevin Hegarty was appointed editor of the Irish Bishops’ Conference-sponsored magazine Intercom, published under the aegis of the Bishops’ Commission on Communications. In its December 1993 issue an article titled “Twenty Questions for the Bishops” challenged their handling of clerical child sex abuse. “Will they eschew silence as the preferred legal and moral strategy in the face of future allegations?” it asked.

In 1993, the Irish bishops criticized an Intercom article on women priests published in the magazine and written by the current Irish President Mary McAleese (then a university professor).

In 1994, Father Hegarty was removed as editor of Intercom after publishing an article challenging the bishops’ handling of clerical child sex abuse. In March 1994 auxiliary bishop of Dublin, Eamonn Walsh, who was investigated by the Murphy commission, was appointed to survey the Bishops’ Conference on their attitude to Intercom. In July 1994 Father Hegarty was appointed full-time curate at Shanaghy in west Mayo. “In the circumstances I felt I had no choice but to let go of Intercom,” he said.

In a January 1995 letter to the Irish Times, Mary McAleese (then a university professor) wrote that “what is truly depressing about this episode, though, is the contrast between the energy and determination which went into sorting out a perceived problem with the editorial tone of Intercom , and the sheer breathtaking ineptitude of church handling of matters relating to child abuse by clergy….It is truly ironic that Father Kevin Hegarty raised the issue openly inIntercom” long before the Father Brendan Smyth affair, and in so doing incurred the wrath of those so anxious now to reassure us of their clean hands and bona fides in this squalid business.”

The Irish Times on December 8, 2009 reports that Father Hegarty said the Murphy report “showed that church leaders placed most premium on loyalty, regardless of the truth.” He said. “We live in a dysfunctional church, which happens when deafness becomes deadly,” he said. The bishops named in the Murphy report include the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, the Bishop of Galway, two Dublin auxiliary bishops, and Bishop of Limerick. Monsignor Dolan, the vice chancellor in Dublin from 1980 to 1997, is also named; he became chancellor in 1997.

Before he became pope, Cardinal Ratzinger was Prefect for Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It is hard to fathom how the pope might whitewash this situation involving both church and state over which he had assumed personal control for at least the past 8 years. In a nation that understood the Curia was operating both as a sovereign state with diplomatic ties as well as in the spiritual domain. Would this pope actually address concerns that the Papal nuncio was ’showing contempt’ for the State institutions? In Ireland.

Under orders from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, American Jesuit Thomas Reese resigned on May 6, 2005 as editor of the Catholic magazine America because he had published articles critical of church positions, several Catholic officials in the United States told the New York Times. The order to dismiss the editor of America magazine was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in mid-March when the Vatican office of doctrinal enforcement was still headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Catholic officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter. (Some have suggested it was the American bishops who got Father Reese removed, a story much like Father Kevin Hegarty’s dismissal.) Soon after Father Reese’s dismissal, Pope John Paul II died and Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI.

People Watching

Expelled. From the garden. Crime and punishment. What a punishment. To be compelled to discover the world. The mountains. The rivers. Appellations for all of this. Creating artificial borders

The conflicts. Reparations. A lot like for sins, war reparations. Over time.

The “Stans.’ Those countries where the Ubis, the Pakis called home. Or the Kurds. Or the Afghans. Where rivers divide. Where mountains formed by glaciers had underground sources of water. Uzbekistan. Kazakhstan. Tajikistan. Kyrgyzstan. Turkmenistan. And tajikistan.

Muslims. In the “_stans.” There was a lot of fear about all the ___stans. To discover all of it. The transforming world of glaciers. As icecaps melted. Somewhere bin Laden. Amidst the snow and the wind, still howling like an animal lost off the mountain top. Looking for reparations. And people watching. Amidst the conflict.

Catholics. In Europe. In the Americas. In Africa. In the changing world. The recording of the atmosphere of otherworldliness. In search for “core competencies.” In school. In the real world. People watching.

Expelled. Charlie Weiss was expelled as coach of the Notre Dame football team. There was a time when every Catholic male in the country would care about this news story. That atmosphere of otherworldliness, in South Bend. Were concerns about Notre Dame’s recruiting reflective of problems that the Roman Catholic Church had with the current generation? Way beyond football? Was it poor leadership that had allowed the prestige of otherworldliness to slip away? Was their some kind of identity theft which had occurred over the past generation that was just be discovered now? Was it about social-issue questions. Worldly social issue questions so much focused on sex?

The best consultants use the rhetoric of personal empowerment. A messianic devotion to gurus.

“Outright shamans who sprinkle on the science like so much fairy dust.” Political polling. Politicians. Tax and spend politicians. To build. Land use and global warming. Deforstation. Attention was directed at carbons in the air, but not at the issue of land use.

“Up in the Air.” The book was now a George Clooney movie. About a new sovereign state. Based on airlines. And frequent flying. Where the world was based upon the all-important miles. Flown miles and the control of credit cards. To be compelled to discover the world.

Creating artificial borders
With the firmest tenets. Of liberty. In thin air. In places where business people called home. Airports. Smelling and breathing at the same time.

People watching. Stealth people watching. It was an inhuman time. When the nineties will be remembered as the decade of finance, of computers. And then 2009. Now more sophisticated. More jaded and knowing. Where every question comes down to economics. It was an inhuman time, with bright lights and glamour. Without a lot of emotion or human drama. But style. And now addressing that pain. With the hang over from the Greenspan cheap money era of the last decade, where all the excesses were around at sea level. Prepared for the physical deadlines, the financial deadlines, I faced now. Of the body. Of a tooth ache.

That atmosphere of other-worldliness. Prayer. On mountaintops. Smelling and breathing at the same time. With fewer spiritual pretensions than found at sea level. Oriented over time to something within. Like the melting icecaps. Of the fabled snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and the Swiss glaciers. Was global climate change real? Addressing the pain. Nations in Copenhagen seemed to think the clock was ticking.

To be compelled to discover the world. Now addressing the crimes. Of endangered places. And addressing that pain. From abscesses and excesses. As an imposed punishment. Of the created artificial borders. Oh to be compelled to discover the world.

People watching. Dramatically inert. Neither knowing nor caring what it is interiorly involved. What’s going on inside the borders of that face? Without my emotional response. Actors. Actresses. “She just stands around.” With pretty, childlike face. Smelling and breathing at the same time. Without an awareness. It was December. With long stretches of people watching. Without recognizing the border. What should be an appropriate expression?

Feedback

Why is it that we don’t seek to shut down an automobile driving school if one of its graduates decides to mow down pedestrians as they cross the street? Well, because the school presumably did not teach them to commit evil with their new skills. If they had, they should certainly be held accountable. So too is it with SOA. The burden of proof is on the protesters to prove that the school teaches its cadets to violate human rights. If the protesters can prove such a thing the debate is theirs. The problem is, instruction on objective human rights is copiously woven throughout the entire curriculum at the SOA. And members of the advisory Board of Visitors serve to ensure and verify it. Why is that so difficult to understand?

I wrote about the participation of an American Catholic bishop, Bishop Robert Morlino of the Madison, Wisconsin Diocese, on the advisory board to the United States Army School of the Americas, questioning the relationship of his public witness role of the Catholic faith. The use of his position as a bishop. And the above response came in.

History bears witness to the violence conducted against its own citizens by armies, by regimes, in Latin American nations. Military juntas and dictators in the 20th century attempting to maintain power. These were not violations of human rights. This was outright killing. Perhaps the commenter should rent a couple movies, if he/she cannot read the history. “Missing”, about Chile, starring Jack Lemon. “Salvador,” a movie by Oliver Stone (who does not always let the facts get in the way of his stories.)

The School of the Americas does not teach soldiers from other countries to “commit evil.” Or how to drive. These were
governments sending employed soldiers for training in torture. To enforce their concept of law and order. Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzar arrested 3,000 of his political opponents, killed 200 of them, and tortured the remainder. Argentine dictator Leopoldo Galtieri oversaw the torture and murder of more than 30,000 dissidents. And the School of the Americas helped to show the means for numerous dictators to viciously oppress, even training some founders of Los Zetas, a mercenary army for one of Mexico’s largest drug-trafficking groups known as the Gulf Cartel. Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, the leader of the El Salvador death-squad got his training at the school. To name names.

“Instruction on objective human rights is copiously woven throughout the entire curriculum at the SOA. And members of the advisory Board of Visitors serve to ensure and verify it.”

Really? In 1996 the Pentagon released to the public the SOA training manuals used for years. “These manuals advocated torture, extortion, blackmail and the targeting of civilian populations,” according to http://soaw.org.

The posed question was why “we” don’t shut down a driving school. In this case, the School of the Americas is not a private school. The school is a part of the government of the United States. The protest over the School of the Americas has nothing to do with “the graduates” but the support by the United States to the policies and tactics used by governments, in the past, in the present, and in the future. The facts of history demonstrate American foreign policy in Latin America. One administration after another has supported the policies of the elites to torture their own people. And I called the question as to why an American bishop was lending his support on the advisory board to the school.

If there ever was a trial about the righteousness of the School of the Americas, the conclusion of law would be based upon the finding of facts. Which facts were true. There is no burden of proof on protesters. The United States Constitution has long been found to grant the right to protest. The same bill of rights that grants freedom of religion. Writers are even free to make inane comments about things that they have little knowledge of. This is not some high school debate. This is about history and the lives and deaths of real people. And rights to free speech and assembly should not be restricted to lattitudes and longtitudes on the map, but to all people.

In May 2009 the Latin America Military Training Review Act was introduced. So far the bill has not come out of committee.

Towing the Line

A free Catholic press. Everyone whose name appears in print has certain feelings about the press. Everyone who was in search of the Truth.

I don’t like sweeps week stories conducted by my local news hatchet men and women on sexual abuse by church members. On my Christian denomination. I know the percentages. That American school teachers abuse children something like two to three times more than the stories on clerical abuse that have been headline stories over the last 20 years. Those stories seldom are aired.

I believe greatly in the Truth. I was schooled for the most part post Vatican II. In Roman Catholic institutions. My belief is in a collegial approach where conservatives and liberals engaged in open discussion find the Truth. With a powerful sense of identity and worth, my belief included transparency.

“Let thee without sin cast the first stone.” The emerging policy as to who can speak on Catholic campuses in Minnesota. In an atmosphere of academic freedom, without censorship. With a pope whose philosophy was spelled out long before the white clouds of smoke appeared indicating his election. He believed in pruning. By the nomenklatura. Mostly of those who looked at the Truth a bit differently than the victors. In the institution church. By the elite.

“Only individuals in good standing with the Catholic church can be invited to speak at churches or other Catholic venues or be considered for an award from the church, according to a new policy issued by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis,” reports the National Catholic Reporter. “The speaker’s writings and previous public presentations must also be in harmony with the teaching and discipline of the church,” the press release said.

The Washington Post reports that the 67 million American Catholics are sharply divided on religious and political issues including same-sex marriage, health care and abortion. Who exactly is Catholic? What does it mean to be a Catholic? The same question was recently addressed
in England concerning what constituted being Jewish. Sarah Lyall wote in the New York Times an account of a controversy stemming from a Court of Appeal’s decision in the United Kingdom about the Jewishness of a boy trying to get into the Jews’ Free School in London. The secular court ruled the criteria for Jewishness must be “faith, however defined” — rather than family ties. Rather than blood. Who ever defined a Jew, or persecuted one on the basis of the frequency of attendance at the synagogue, was the question Roger Cohen asked this week in the New York Times.

The mass media seems to get a lot wrong. Like the Court of Appeal in the United Kingdom had about what Jews really celebrated during the High Holy Days. The Catholic theology seems pretty clear. People who advocate for abortion are not, whether baptized or not, in their hearts theologically Catholics. Faith was the basis of Catholicism. The problem concerning belief of when life begins is about the rights of non-Catholics in a land where Roe v. Wade is the law, in a nation where Catholics are minorities. In Congressional districts.

Recent comments by Francis Cardinal George suggested to Chicago Tribune writer Manya Brachear “that my colleagues in ‘media claiming to be a voice in the church’ should tow the line….George insisted that the bishops’ quest is not about imposing control, but clarifying Catholic media’s relationship with the church.”

Francis Cardinal George was a priest on the same college campus at the time I studied for four years. He is a man for whom I had the highest respect. And I still do. Cardinal George life is one of uncommon generosity in an often hostile uncomprehending culture. And Cardinal George is a representative of the church who actually meets the press.

Manya Brachear wrote: “Relations do not speak first of control but of love,” George said. “If there is a loosening of relationship between ourselves and those whom Christ has given us to govern in love, it is for us to reach out and re-establish connections necessary for all to remain in communion.”

Manya Brachear quoted Cardinal George: “Since everything and everyone in Catholic communion is truly inter-related, and the visible nexus of these relations is the bishop, an insistence on complete independence from the bishop renders a person or institution sectarian, less than fully Catholic.”

strong> According to the Associated Press, Cardinal George said the issue would be taken up in Baltimore as part of a broader look by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ at what groups can legitimately call themselves Catholic. “If those relationships — which don’t mean control, they mean relationship — are now weakened, then we have to think of ways to enter discussion in order to strengthen them, and to redefine perhaps what are the criteria for a university or any other organization to consider itself Catholic,” George said in an interview ahead of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ meeting.

Cardinal George is on shaky ground to be invoking the need for “towing the line” by the media for the institution church which has lacked so much transparency on issues of cover ups of sexual abuse, over so many years. Or on the discussion over who is worthy to receive communion by those Catholics elected to public office. “Let thee without sin cast the first stone.” How about the bishop in Newfoundland who was arrested in August with porn on his computer? Was he worthy? Who was worthy?

“Let thee without sin cast the first stone.” There is this dominant Catholic social justice concern. Underlying it all is about a fight against corruption. To be “fully Catholic.” And from the news stories, those bishops should be dropping their stones on issues like withholding communion. Like five of those bishops in Ireland. To start with.

And about the never ending story about sexual abuse. About the news from Ireland this week. Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin wrote to his people on Thursday: “The sexual abuse of a child is and always was a CRIME in civil law; it is and always was a crime [in] canon law; it is and always was grievously sinful.”

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin wrote: “Efforts made to ‘protect the Church’ and to ‘avoid scandal’ have had the ironic result of bringing this horrendous scandal on the Church today.”

Journalist were called to Truth-telling, sometimes more nobly than found in an archbishop’s robe. Journalists, not towing the line as so many bishops have done over the years, claiming to be ‘a voice of the church.’

Sexual abuse of a child was a crime in Ireland. Would the cover up in Ireland be a crime? Would the cover up by people in Rome who seem to think they are above human law be a crime? About that position of Bernard Law in Rome since he left Boston. Obviously, he was rewarded by his friendship with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Cardinal Law is still there. Still a cardinal. Towing the line. The former and the current Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith who have been overseeing all issues of sexual of abuse at least for the last 7 or 8 years. The former German cardinal and the cardinal from San Francisco. I do not know who oversaw the matter prior to 2001. Perhaps the Prefect’s boss.

In Ireland. In the United States. In Canada. Anywhere where children were sexually abuse. What is truly amazing is that you had no one blow the whistle on it all. A priest? A nun? Even within the hierarchy of the institution which has always used “the silence” within the operations of the Curia like “the silence” was used within the Cosa Nostra. I have this book about all these people who put their lives in danger to rescue Jews during the times of Hitler. If they were caught, the rescuer would have been shot. There were no such stories in the American Catholic Church? About blowing the whistle on these worldwide shenanigans, did not one person ever quit the priesthood in shame? Or had they? Over the leadership of the institution church. Over bishops, archbishops, and cardinals? The ones who had behaved too much like Pharisees, as depicted in the New Testament. The ones who worried about when John Paul II would be canonized. When he presided over all of this. Yeah, the prefect’s boss.
Over what kind of culture this had become?

About the search for Truth and towing the line. According to Cardinal George, Catholic universities, media outlets and other affiliated organizations that insist on independence from the church hierarchy are “less than fully Catholic.”

Towing the line. In law. Or with academic freedom. With a powerful sense of identity, with a True concern for social justice, journalists were supposed to ‘tow the line.’

Yeah, exactly who again can speak on Catholic campuses?

Those Quiet Carbon Imprints

Before he became pope, Cardinal Ratzinger was quoted in America Magazine as stating that the church needs to get smaller so that it can become purer. And the plans seemed to well be underway. Actually the comments were based upon Salt of the Earth, a full-length interview to a secular journalist, as well the 1985 The Ratzinger Report, a best-selling book/interview. In an article in 2005, Notre Dame professor R. Scott Appleby was quoted: “If it’s true Pope Benedict XVI prefers a leaner, smaller, purer church as he has spoken of before,” said Notre Dame professor R. Scott Appleby, “we could see a withering of certain Catholic institutions because they’re not considered fully Catholic. This might include Catholic colleges, hospitals, and other Catholic institutions.”

On November 18, 2009, RACHEL ZOLL (AP) wrote the following:

BALTIMORE — Fallout continues from the summer controversy over the University of Notre Dame awarding an honorary degree to President Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops went behind closed doors at their fall meeting Wednesday to discuss, among other issues, what action they should take to increase oversight of the nation’s more than 200 Roman Catholic colleges and universities. Chicago Cardinal Francis George, president of the bishops’ conference, revealed this week that he had formed a task force charged with reviewing the issue. Its research included a look at what church law says about bishops’ authority over the schools. The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities has planned a similar discussion of canon law and bishops’ authority at the group’s annual meeting, set to begin Jan. 30 in Washington.

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The Who

Signs of endings.

The markets. I am absorbed by the markets. At this point in time. Based upon the state of the world. When everything seemed liable to crash in the time of a megabyte.

In Russia. It all looked as if one hundred years ago that it was all over in a revolution. The 1906 revolution seemed a lot more real at this point of history, than it did reading the account when I was in college. And then the revolution in 1917. The fears of those times were never well conveyed by those history teachers.

In Spain in a civil war. I heard this Federico Garcia Lorca presentation Wednesday night, with an ending when I was required to get the flowers to give to the Master of Ceremony to present at the conclusion off the show. I barely made it with the flowers for the performers. The performers who were reciting compositions in fearful times.

Endings. Oprah. When Comcast wants NBC Universal. Time Warner. Disney. Viacom. News Corp. Those who control people’s lives, as measured by minutes. How did you spend your time? All powered by cable networks. What is the meaning of the hegemony? In this hegemony with all the change. Where the world was headed, without Oprah. The changing paradigm. When people thought they were supreme.

Endings. The Amanda Knox trial in Europe now in its ninth month? On Friday there was the seven hour closing argument by the prosecution. Meredith Kercher, a Leeds University student who came to Perugia to pursue her European Studies degree, to learn Italian. Her American roommate, Amanda Knox, “hated” her British roommate, Ms. Kercher, for complaining about her personal hygiene, and for suggesting that she was promiscuous in her habit of bringing men back to their shared house, a jury of six lay people and two professional judges was told, and Ms. Knox murdered her in “an unstoppable crescendo of violence.” Today lead prosecutor Giuliano Mignini read the Latin phrase from ancient Roman jurist Eneo Domizio Ulpiano, about justice. “Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuendi. Iuris praecepta sunt haec.” Justice is the constant and perpetual will to render to every man his due.

The end of the year. What were you thankful for? What had you seen? Where had your eyes taken you? Who had you touched? This year? Where had I found the truth? With the signs of endings. The times that you shared. Who you had met. At this point in time. Who you worked for. What you did. Jobs. Life. Who you had married. The things which were shared. The community ties.

The end of life. It was the Feast of Christ the King today. And just as only Mary really knew who was responsible for his birth, only Jesus and Mary seemed to know on that Friday who was responsible for his death. Who could believe him? The divine? So God was gonna learn through a new point of view a bit more about pain. Almost silently God had visited. And it was over. The divine. In human form. Who could believe in His silent presence? The humanness of Jesus. On the same earth that I walked on. Almost silently to the world. As quiet as a faith.

The Gospel reading not about the Final Judgment, but with Pontius Pilate. The end of life. Where the world judged Jesus of Nazareth. Under ancient Roman law. “Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuendi. Iuris praecepta sunt haec.” Bloodlines and DNA. When Judaism is a comprehensive way of life filled with practices that affect every aspect of life, from morning til night. Personally. When Judaism was based on bloodlines, on sacrifice, on suffering, and not based on evangelical door to door knocking. Pilate and the law. Did history doubt that Pontius Pilate was real? When Pilate said to Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Bloodlines. Concerning that blood in the Jewish tradition, as in royal lines. Judaism which was then and now all about awareness that affects every aspect of life, from morning til night. Bloodlines. The awareness in relationships of the human. And the recognition of the divine. It was a religion not just a recognition of, an awareness, about God, man, woman, and the universe, but about everything. More about action than words. A religion about bindings, concerning that blood and the pain. And the proper way to worship.

The romance between God and His people. The pain of trying to work on becoming more worthy. Being moved to sacrifice. Somehow. Like all religion, it was about the pain. In kinship to the God who cannot die. In sacrifice. And passing on that kinship, just as Abraham had.

Here was the awareness of the conflict in the story. God’s awareness of the conflict. Since the time of Abraham. When Abraham challenged the meaning of his life, in the Akedah story, challenging God for all that He had given to him. And slowly all of his blessings had been taken away. In old age. In death. With no mention of a Resurrection to Abraham. What was next to come. Except that Sarah and Abraham had a son. Was Abraham really asking God in the Akedah, if he really had been chosen, about the future? His own future? By asking him to sacrifice his son, what about Abraham’s own future? Abraham with all of his awareness, at his end with a loss of vitality, with the suffering in old age, was the actual mystery in the harsh godless profane pagan world? Why did I have all this? And why was I losing it? It was the “Why me?” question. Had Abraham in the first place ever been worthy? Worthy of life? And why did I have all this? And what now?

So “are you the King of the Jews?” Reflecting on the meaning. Those descendants of Abraham. Reflecting on the meaning of making some kind of an offering to God. Like Abraham tried to make. When your relationships, based so much in sacrifice, with God and his Chosen People, with your parents or with your kids, with a kinship that involved not only blood but love. Seeing the pain and the suffering. Every year, the human suffering? And God somehow feeling so unworthy? As God was the artist in the time of Noah, wanting to destroy his own creation. Not at all unlike Abraham? What He had seen reflected in Abraham and all that time spent in his struggle. Trying to pass on a tradition. Beyond just the DNA. Like watching television from above. On High. Of the struggle. On earth. What now? In the real world?

When Pilate said to Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” A royal line. Passing on a way of life. A Chosen People, in kinship to the God who cannot die. In kingship. The Christ, the King. And royal lines. Finally deciding on the who. When the divine learned what it really meant to be human. And when humanity really learns what it means to have divine life.

The Christ, the King, and the end, at the end of a year. The divine. Always and everywhere. The signs of endings? The Resurrection and what it did ultimately mean for God to become human? This was his attempt to pass on tradition? Through a human. The Messiah. What had Abraham been trying to do? The fears of the times, never well conveyed by those history teachers. What was it like to face the end? Your own ending? Passing on ‘everlasting life.’ How to pass on another form of life. Resurrection, as a form of inheritance. It was how a human had redeemed humanity. It was a struggle.

Almost silently, God had visited. Passing on a way of life. ‘Everlasting life.’ To those made in the image and likeness of God. Me. You. Amidst all of life’s pain, amidst all of the change, it was the end of another church year. What Larry Gillick calls “God’s continuation syndrome.” Where God is “always beginning over and over again to share over and over divine love” with you and me. And so another church year ends. Facing once more, Larry Gillick writes, the call of God “to allow ourselves to be loved, and still do something about this world.

The love lesson. Those feeling of always being unworthy. God in His incredible subtleness, day in and day out. Until you eventually figured some things out. About Jesus of Nazareth. About Thanksgiving. To “live His ways of reverence, generous availability and non-apologetic graciousness.” About Christ, the king. About me. A lesson of that love is available if you believed in the stories of, the life of Jesus of Nazareth. A lesson of that love, with awareness that affects every aspect of life, from morning til night. A lesson about Resurrection and forgiveness. ‘Everlasting life.’

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On Faith and Morals

The age of terror started in the southern hemisphere years before September 2001. The twentieth anniversary of the killing at the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador of a housekeeper, her teenage daughter, and six Jesuit priests is next Monday. “Be a patriot! Kill a priest!” was an infamous slogan at the time, to terrorize the current generation into submission.

The United States Army School of the Americas (SOA) based at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia then and now trains Latin American soldiers in combat and counter-insurgency. The School of the Americas (SOA) changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC)in January 2001. The name of Archbishop Oscar Romero is included in the litany of the dead and disappeared, along with four American Maryknoll nuns, the El Mazote Massacre of 900 civilians at the Rio Sumpul, and tens of thousands of Latin Americans massacred, tortured, raped, or “disappeared” at the hand of SOA alumni. Or forced into refuge. Graduates of the SOA are responsible for the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. And Bishop Robert Morlino of the Madison, Wisconsin Diocese since 1999 has been allowed to serve since 2005 as an adviser to Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, on their advisory Board of Visitors. (Bishop Robert Morlino was one of eighty bishops who said he would not have allowed President Obama to speak at the graduation at Notre Dame.)

The annual vigil of prayer and protest against the School of the Americas very much involves the Catholic community. The time of protest outside of Fort Benning is once again at hand as students, religious, labor, human rights and social/global justice groups in solidarity with the people of the Americas, asking on November 20th through November 22nd in nonviolent action exactly what kind of country sponsors the School of the Americas, under any name. The current struggle of a nation coming to grips with the closing of Guantanamo Bay detention camps has precluded any self examination of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which has continued under Clinton, Bush and Obama. In November, 2004, there were 16,000 outside of Fort Benning, protesting the continued support. After his election to president, Obama has resisted pleas to shut the school but he has promised to end torture.

On the eve of the week of Thanksgiving, with the National Conference of Bishops meeting in Baltimore this week voting on matter of the nature and purposes of marriage, I have to wonder about the Catholic part of Bishop Robert Morlino of the Madison, Wisconsin Diocese. If it is the responsibility as bishop to encourage Catholic institutions to “give public witness to the fullness of the Catholic faith,” as stated by Bishop D’Arcy of Fort Wayne about his pastoral presence at Notre Dame, I have to wonder how in the age of terror Bishop Robert Morlino of the Madison, Wisconsin Diocese can justify his participation in the existence of United States Army School of the Americas. If he is in communion with the faithful, his public witness to the fullness of the Catholic faith gives foundation to those that massacre, torture and force into refuge. How in the name of God could you lend support to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation? And then speak out with credibility on any other moral issue? How is he not censored by the National Conference of Bishops? Or by the Vatican? How is he allowed to speak at any Catholic institution?

With the massacred, tortured, raped, or “disappeared”at the hands of SOA alumni, I am uncertain about Bishop Robert Morlino of the Madison, Wisconsin Diocese ability to judge right from wrong. Why would anyone look to Bishop Morlino for any moral guidance? He also wrote at one time that only he, not his flock, should read The Da Vinci Code to be able to understand it. In a university town.

From the late 1970s into the early 1990s, in another age of terror in the southern hemisphere, the United States supported the Salvadoran government armed forces throughout their civil war, with ongoing persecution of clergy and repression of movements for social change. The November 16, 1989 Jesuits martyrdom in the El Salvador civil war was hardly the only instance of repression. It was no different sponsoring the School of he Americas than being a sponsor of Al-Qaeda.

Since September 11, 2001, the age of terror was a lot more personal. In the southern hemisphere years before September 2001, the tax dollars of the American people were used to terrorize a generation into submission, in places where the number of victims well exceeded that American number of dead on September 11, 2001. Away from the lights of New York.

In solidarity with the people of the Americas, on November 20th through November 22nd the protesters will reveal the radiance of their own discovery, no thanks to Bishop Morlino. It was Joseph Campbell who said that preachers “err by trying to talk people into belief. Better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery.”

In other news President Obama announced that he does not intend to sign an international treaty banning land mines saying, “we determined that we wouldn’t be able to meet our national defense needs, nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we signed this convention.”