Bishop of Columbus Diocese Weighs In

I was a bit surprised to see our bishop weigh in on the ND controversy, in part because of his illness and in part because he seems pretty laid back about these matters, but he did so in his typically irenic and fair way:

The Concern at the University of Notre Dame
By The Most Reverend Frederick F. Campbell, D.D., Ph.D.
Bishop of Columbus

Undoubtedly, you have heard or read about the controversy surrounding the decision of the administration at the University of Notre Dame to invite President Barack Obama to give the commencement address and to confer upon him an honorary degree.

It is important to understand why such a decision has occasioned such controversy. As a Catholic institution, Notre Dame lives its academic life within a particular context. It seeks to pursue truth, in its many and various disciplines, with the understanding that all truth ultimately derives from God and is oriented toward the enhancement of human dignity from conception to natural death and beyond. Every human person possesses a destiny that stretches into eternity.

President Obama, in his political career, has repeatedly voiced his support for abortion “rights” and for embryonic stem cell research, both offenses against human dignity. The Catholic Church opposes such offenses, not because of some special revelation or particular creed, but because these things are matters of basic natural justice. In 2004, the Catholic bishops of the United States agreed that no institution that claims the name Catholic should honor proponents of such activity by inviting them to speak on prestigious occasions or to confer upon them honorary degrees. President Obama was not invited to an academic seminar or a simple discussion on moral questions. The invitation to give a commencement address is often a privileged occasion to propose policy or to encourage certain principles. An honorary degree is given to individuals, not only to recognize their achievements, but also to indicate that their lives and work exemplify the ideals of the institution.

The Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, John D’Arcy, in whose diocese the University of Notre Dame lies, has cogently reminded the university of how its invitation to President Obama undermines its responsibility to its Catholic identity. I believe that Bishop D’Arcy’s decision not to attend the commencement (for the first time in years) is a proper one and morally courageous. I pray that Our Blessed Lady, under whose patronage the University of Notre Dame was founded, will assist by her prayers the university’s more authentic understanding of its identity as a Catholic institution.

As someone has said on Fr. Z's blog, "He is not only on the right side of the issue: he has the right arguments and he strikes the right tone. This letter is proof positive that it is possible to be both pastoral and firm, clear and yet nuanced, strong and yet not strident."

Some on Fr. Z's blog recommend writing thank you letters, which, I don't know, strikes me as a tad presumptuous. He's the shepherd. I'm not sure it's my job to try to influence him one way or another in a disciplinary matter that I'm not directly involved in, or to thank him in what cynically looks like a ploy to "reward good behavior".

It does look like the force that will unite the bishops is an overstepping by the less-than-orthodox community. Fr. Jenkins certainly provided a text book case of overstepping.

Sowell's Latest

Thomas Sowell has always struck me as a very wise man, but his latest book Housing Boom & Bust has signs of bust about it.

I searched the book on amazon.com and got no hits on "securitized", "CDO" and nothing about Wall Street or leverage that mentions the huge bets made on that housing industry.

Perhaps I'm looking for something the book title doesn't promise. He wanted to write about the housing boom & bust and not about what happened with it and because of it. But my point is this: who cares if house prices boomed and busted? That's part of what happens to every asset in every age since the first economic cycle east of Eden. What makes this one killer is the huge leverage that brought down banks and economies from here to Iceland, instead of just causing foreclosures in the 5% of American households who couldn't afford their house payment.

I hope that Sowell, who is one of the biggest truthtellers around, isn't letting his desire to (understandably) scorch those who brought on the housing bust - such as Fannie, Freddie, easy credit - obscure larger, more important issue. We've learned about the dangers of trying to put everyone in a house and so that is, now at least, relatively uninteresting. We haven't learned how to label and market securitized assets.

Maybe I should check out Meltdown by Thomas Woods at the library and see what he has to say...

Diamond of the Green

He carried the bat like a cross,
heavy balsamic wood
the tool of the trade
keeper of the livelihood
and you could tell by the way
he checked his swing
he wasn't one to be messed with.

Like Shane he came to town alone,
unlettered, without fancy men
or body guards
public relations operatives
or press secretaries.
He looked the rugged individualist
as if carrying the burden that all men
must go to the plate alone.

He of tall socks and tall timber
was cool as a young Lou Brock
strong as an old Frank Howard,
the village smithy from the Lehigh Valley
playing outfield for the IronPigs.

The pitcher writhes after
ball meets bat: igniting, soaring,
carrying beyond the bounds of respectability
over the 405 sign,
a sure sign of authenticity.

____

John Mayberry

"He’s got a lot of potential,” This is a good time for him to take off as far as making the major leagues. With the talent he’s got, there’s no reason he can’t play in the big leagues.” – Phillies manager Charlie Manuel, March 6, 2007. More here.

Tale of Two Divas

Camille Paglia opines:

Having followed Madonna's career with enthusiasm and then disappointment for the past 25 years, it's difficult for me to avoid making comparisons. Madonna and Daniela (seven years younger) are both theatrical Leos who were born in provincial obscurity, began their careers as dancers and became singers and major impresarios of their own troupes. Madonna remains the most visible performer on the planet, as well as one of the wealthiest, but would anyone seriously say that artistic self-development is her primary motivating principle? She is too busy with Kabbalah, fashion merchandising, adoption melodramas, the gym, and ill-starred horseback riding to study art. Madonna can still produce a catchy pop song, but she hasn't expanded her artistic vocabulary since the 1990s. Her concerts are glitzy extravaganzas of special effects overkill. She leaves little space in them for emotional depth or unscripted rapport with the audience.

Compare the two photos, above. Daniela, holding her 2007 Latin Grammy award, is, despite her excitement, warm, open and observant. Guess what: Daniela, unlike Madonna, actually recognizes the existence of human beings in the real world outside her ego. She has a graceful, natural, ripe womanliness (she has two grown children and recently became a grandmother), but there is often an undercurrent of something boyish, mischievous and subversive. Energy, spontaneity, humor, candor and hospitality are leading values for Daniela onstage and off...

Now behold Madonna, arriving muscular and veiny-armed at the Vanity Fair party after this year's Oscars in Los Angeles. Trying to be fair, I am not posting the horror candids of a skeletal Madonna in gym rags, nor am I showing her glassy-eyed at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame Awards last year, when she was reeling through a bad pre-divorce patch. But Madonna, like Joan Crawford or the late Marlene Dietrich, has become a mask whose eyes see nothing but itself. Her life, for all her globe-hopping, has become rigid, predetermined, suspicious and claustrophobic. Despite her spiritual talk, Madonna is a voracious materialist and status-monger who is as addicted as Leni Riefenstahl to her triumph of the will. Persons have become mere instruments to her -- which is why she cannot communicate with them heart-to-heart. And it is why Madonna's creativity has tragically withered.

Zippy Declares Pax

Some of the torture posts are actually pretty interesting. I especially found Zippy's thread so, coming a day or two before he declared a Pax Zippata.

What's interesting to me in the torture debate is to see how a hermeneutic of continuity can be maintained between different church eras. I suppose it's just the development of doctrine at work, a form of which we've seen elsewhere.

In a case of Prot v. Prot (the term 'Prot' meant endearingly), we have these two comments:

Speaking as a Protestant, it seems to me that the so-called "purification of memory" has been carefully attended to in the case of Catholic-Jewish relations, where the Church was _far_ less directly involved, and has been rather neglected in Catholic-Protestant relations.

... to which came the response:

As a self identified Protestant, and as a matter of both courtesy and charity, I respectfully request that you read Catholic documents before you criticize the Catholic Church's history. Both before and after the publication of this Bull every Pope, Council, Doctor of the Church or Saint who explicitly taught the faithful on morality of torture taught that torture is immoral.

(Now to parse the difference between "Speaking as a Protestant" and "As a self-identified Protestant"...)

I was amused by Lydia McGrew's "You think the way they got robbers and thieves to confess was by playing loud music to them in the middle of the night?" It's hard not to see the 1300s as a rougher age, though Richard C. attempts to make the case:

The unvarnished truth is that neither you or I know hardly anything about Innocent IV and 13th Century Lombardy. We do know that this Papal Bull is being used by some Catholics to morally justify torture and to call into question the validity of Vatican II and the Post Conciliar Popes. We also know that it is being used by anti-Catholic bigots to justify their hatred of the Church.

Commenter Billy cut to the chase:

My personal opinion is that the Church is indicating acts of torture are immoral, and there are indeed acts of coercion that are immoral, and therefore (surprise: apparently new formulation of doctrine) some past practices were damnable and ought to be damned. And at the same time the recent teaching is not YET trying to indicate that all forms of coercion are of themselves, of their very nature, intrinsically immoral , (as, for starters, some acts that would not normally rise to the degree of harshness that we associate with the term torture) - the new position is trying to leave some space for further development, further elucidation as time goes on. That is, while She may indeed wish to condemn as evil all torture, She does not at this time wish to declare as intrinsically evil all forms of coercion because the subject needs more development.

As a result, She treads somewhat lightly on dealing with a broad category that includes torture but also includes acts that do not arise to "torture". Calling the entire category "intrinsically evil" without distinction seems beyond what the Church wishes to teach at this time.

Links

Amy Welborn shoots & scores in illuminating the double standard in which if you are pro-life you are dismissed as being "political" while if you favor Democratic policy positions you are in tune with Catholic social teaching. She says what we already knew but articulates it so well.
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Why Danielle Bean wears a brown scapular.
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Disco Hayes, the blog of a MLB pitching prospect:

I am called Disco because I throw in the 70s.

I gave myself the nickname, which is a true sign you have "arrived". I've done some extensive research and the demographics are really showing people are liking the nickname. 42 to 58-year-old males associate with the era and think it adds a cool-factor to an unassuming white guy with not a whole lot of "wow-factor". The most alarming news and perhaps the best sign the nickname is working is with 21 to 34-year-old females. Prior to my nickname, only 0.3% of this demographic had heard of me...

Hopkins in New Yorker

I lapped up an article in The New Yorker about Gerard Manley Hopkins. It was crack-cocaine-ish in seeing Hopkins portrayed outside the friendly confines, in a stridently secular publication. (Of course the modern lie of objectivity is to think only the enthusiasts are biased. And because agnostics aren't enthusiasts, they assume the Olympian heights by default. R.R. Reno wrote about something similar recently in the context of the academic world.)

I’ll say this for article, they do cut to the chase. The things we wanted to know about Hopkins – the things of intense interest – they deal with. No sidelong glances at minutiae they recognize the telling and memorable anecdote.

One in particular was that Hopkins recognizes in himself a similarity to Walt Whitman in sensibility which sort of gave him the willies: "I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman's mind to be more like my own than any other man's living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession."

Without having yet read the book, Hopkins may seem to prove the rule that the good die young, having sacrificed his happiness for the pains of a clergydom he never quite fit.

An excerpt from the article:

But [Hopkins] is always concerned that this love of nature might turn into pantheism, that we might forget the Creator in the creation. That is why, in "God's Grandeur," Hopkins moves directly from praise to chastisement: "Why do men then now not reck his rod?" In "The Starlight Night," he magically evokes the stars - "The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!" - before reminding us that heavens are not Heaven: "Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize," which we must buy with "Prayer, patience, alms, vows."....

For the poet, life is multiple, pied and dappled, endlessly various and alluring; for the priest, life is dualistic, the stage on which good and evil do combat for our eternal soul. Ultimately, Hopkins has no doubt which of these visions must prevail: the poem ends by invoking the "rack" where "thoughts in groans grind," the punishment awaiting the damned....Hopkins was aware of the gulf between his artistic vision and his religious one, and of its costs. That is why he was so ambivalent about writing and publishing his poetry, to an extent that seemed masochistic to his friends.

Belmont Abbey College Mag

Most college magazines - especially for non-alumni - are about as interesting as the omni-present torture discussions going on in the Catlick blogosphere, so imagine my surprise when I couldn't put my free copy of Crossroads down, the magazine of Belmont Abbey College. Darn them, but I'm going to have to donate now just out of appreciation for the quality of the material and effort that went into it. In this Spring '09 issue, Jody Bottum and Michael Novak are interviewed and it's all very interesting. It doesn't appear to be online unfortunately.

Fiction for a Tuesday

Because it's been, what, almost a week? You know what they say, "use it or lose it":

In school, Claude managed the trick of feeling like the most special person in class and the most unremarkable.

Perhaps the paradox could be understood in light of the specialness of his extreme unremarkability although at the time he thought surely his unremarkableness was caused by an undiscovered exceptionalism, rather than deserved. It was only with time that he began to see that the undiscovered could be fictional.

He was transfixed and enraptured by stories of underachieving and comforted by the mere existence of other underachievers. (They didn't have to do anything but exist. To have company is to not feel alone.) While his classmates read of great football heroes or scientists, Claude combed the scant literature on the non-doers.

There were, of course, the great ones like Scott Putoff, Julie Harbor, and Jonas Reboot. Cap "Sleepy" Ralston and Kurt Bedwetter. Rick Hobo, Bob Denver, and "Lazy John" Littleton.

But his great love was baseball, especially lifetime .220 hitters. They were the truly hungry, they who lived on the edge line between life and death, between the majors and the minors. Many of them could well have been overachievers although he could never tell for sure since no one is born with ".220 hitter" birthmark.

AAD Strikes Again

You can't go to Drudge today without noting the criticism of Pope Benedict in Jerusalem. It seems a particular virulent outbreak of AAD so please don your masks, stay indoors, and limit travel....

Apology Addiction Disorder Spreading in Israel

JERUSALEM--A recent outbreak of the modern affliction AAD or "Apology Addiction Disorder" has been noted in Israel during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI.

Researchers say Pope Benedict triggered the latest manifestation of the disease by failing to apologize for deciding to be born in Germany. This despite the fact there is more anti-Semitism in France now than Germany.

AAD is a malady that is not restored by an apology but in fact "feeds" the condition, making the aggrieved party desirous of further, more intense apologies not unlike the sex addict desires increasingly risque encounters.

In the late stages the disease shows itself by a desire that people even distantly related to some past crime show fealty by crawling on all fours and singing Brenda Lee's hit I'm Sorry.

Some say the apology of Pope John Paul II in 2000 made things harder for Pope Benedict, since expectations ran high.

Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

There are, perhaps, two main and very different intellectual fears. The first is a fear of opportunities squandered, of truths unnecessarily missed. The second is a fear of deception, of falsehoods wrongly cherished. It is crushingly obvious that the present dictatorship of relativism is profoundly motivated by the second fear. Aside from the natural sciences, we give students little more than training in critique. Loyal to our critical principles, we can barely squeak out the slenderest of affirmations. Fearful of living in dreams and falling under the sway of ideologies, we have committed ourselves to disenchantment... No philosophy or faith worth its salt endorses a witting love of illusions. It’s the truth we want, not fantasies. Yet, there is something desperate and loveless in the triumph of suspicion. Love falls. As the urgent, searching bridge in the Song of Songs reminds us, love risks the dangers of deception and betrayal. We cannot fall into the embrace of truth by way of cool, dispassionate critique. If we fear that truth will elude us, then we must search and seek with reckless desire... A pedagogy dominated by the critical spirit of our age will invariably make faith seem scandalously committed. What we need, therefore, is to rethink our educational self-image and subordinate the critical moment to a pedagogy that encourages the risks of love’s desire. - R. R. Reno on First Things

I prefer to call it the Holy Flu......if it causes changes like this: "Jenky also suggested that the Sign of Peace should temporarily take on a new expression. Instead of a handshake or an embrace, parishioners are advised to interact with a 'nod of the head or a smile.'" LET THERE BE SUNG TE DEUM! - Bill of Summa Minutiae

One of the major problems with cancer treatment is that the treatment itself is generally harmful to at least some extent. That changes the whole complexion of the case, to my mind. The term "side effects" can begin to sound like a euphemism if we're talking about chemo with a very high level of toxicity. More like, "Am I obligated to take poison--real poison--in the hope that it will kill the disease before it kills me?" I can think of plenty of cases where the answer would be clearly, no, though it might not be wrong to accept the highly toxic treatment, either. - Lydia McGrew on Apologia concerning the moral obligation of treatments

For me, frankly, it depends on how much the treatment is going to cost. If it is expensive cancer treatment that is going to leave my husband tens of thousands of dollars in debt - then no. I don't think so. Give me the pain meds though! - Elena of "My Domestic Church" on the topic above

"I'm just asking, and I'm not equating this with choosing torture, but when we sin, aren't we by definition choosing evil that some good may come?" Yes. My impression is that this fact is what motivates comments like the Anchoress's. "I risk hell every day for paltry goods, and I'm supposed to feel bad about saving the lives of millions?" - Q & A on Tom of Disputations

Right -- we have all sinned, and need to work to repair our relationship with God afterwards. That is one thing. It is another thing to sit comfortably here at my computer and declare that should a certain circumstance arise, I WILL sin, and to oppose legal restritcions against that sin on that basis. Sin is a human failing, and we trust that God will forgive us our sins. We profess that every week. That doesn't mean we plan to sin. - commenter responding to previous Tom K comment

I've read a number of secular commentators say that "Islam needs a Martin Luther" -- though I suspect that what they actually mean is, "Islam needs a Bishop Spong" -- and it is certainly the case that both for political stability in the Middle East and for Christian missionaries to have more of a chance to reach that part of the world, it would be of great help to us as outsiders if a much more "liberal" and "moderate" form of Islam were to take hold. And yet it grates against me to wish against others modernizing trends which I oppose when applied to my own faith. Though I do not think that the Koran is the word of God, it hardly seems right to encourage people to take what they believe to be the word of God and change it in order to make it fit the spirit of the age. - Darwin Cathlic

If the President really wanted to reduce the abortion rate, while keeping the thing in question legal, he could take a lesson from success in reducing the rate of cigarette smoking: massive taxes on it at the federal, state and local levels...combined with carpet-bombing media outlets with PSAs demonizing the product. If you tax something, you get less of it. If you subsidize it, you get more. But guess which is the actual policy of this administration? - commenter on Amy Welborn's blog

Who the hell pays any attention to Michelle Obama's arms and are these people going to get an actual life any time soon?... And the caption to the photograph - in the Washington Post: "The first lady's much-discussed preference for bare arms has proved to be a transformational cultural symbol." Show of hands. Are you guys discussing Michelle's preference for bare arms? As you walk about the culture these days, are you detecting the transformation? I'm up for noting any transformative cultural symbolism of an African-American First Couple, or the generational shift and such, (although I'd rather talk about policy) but really. This is embarrassing. Or should be. - Amy Welborn

I was working hard, hard, hard on confronting myself with this faith, with the whole thing, and asking myself over and over, "Do you believe this?" and answering myself yes and then answering myself back again, "Well, then..." The pastor preached powerfully about the love of God. He wandered a bit before he got there, but when he arrived, he would not let us turn from it. How much God loves us. Do you know? Do you see? Look at the Cross. Look at this gift he gives of himself in the Eucharist. Let the Good Shepherd love you and care for you.Let him. - Amy of "Via Media"

The Power of the Non-Sequitor

In debate, the most common (and seemingly effective) technique seems to be to attribute to your opponent to something he doesn't support.

For example, those who supported the bank bailout are accused by some of being pro-bank, in favor of the greed and the errors they made, instead of simply not wishing bank mistakes to death-spiral the whole economy.

Another example is that misnomer "choice". Some supporters of a right to an abortion seem to believe what I did at the age of five: that babies just "happen" to a man and woman who spend a lot of time together. There's no sense of acknowledgement from them that's there's a choice to be made before conception.

A third example is illustrated by a ND law professor:

To understand what the controversy surrounding Obama's [Notre Dame] invitation is about, it is important to understand what it is not about. Most important, the issue is not, as some commentators have suggested, whether Notre Dame should welcome, engage, debate and explore a wide range of viewpoints.

Yet another example is the reason Bill Clinton was impeached. Many seem to think it was because he had oral sex in the Oval Office. The word perjury is rarely heard, let alone acknowledged.

Preach it Rem!

Heard Rem Rieder of the American Journalism Review say it was unthinkable for newspapers to get any sort of bailout from the government because it would be the "death of credibility" to be partially funded or owned by the government. So true...that's the way I feel about NPR and PBS.

MacArthur's Park Explained!

It was the best of songs, it was the worst of songs. It was a song of striving, a song suggesting a pure, unadulterated uphill battle. In this it is not unlike so many of the '60s songs, all minor keys in the age of Pyrrhic victories and Quixotian dreams:

Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance

Love is in control, or at least is always one step ahead.

Between the parted pages and were pressed,
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants

The Word was made flesh and was pressed into the confines of skin and word, such that it became as seeming ordinary as a pair of pants.

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

A depiction of Original Sin. The Garden of Eden has been ruined, seemingly without remedy. Adam and Eve left the cake out in the rain and it feels irredeemable to them ("I'll never have that recipe again.")

I recall the yellow cotton dress
Foaming like a wave
On the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
And the old men playing checkers by the trees

Adam recalls the idyllicisms of the Garden before the Fall. Man's reason is still intact, shown by the old men playing checkers.

There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it

The first intuitions that there will be a savior, a redeemer, that "someone" from outside the system being Christ.

I will drink the wine while it is warm

Foreshadowing of the Cup.

And never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
You'll still be the one.

The sun here refers to the things of this world. This stanza is about fidelity and faithfulness of Christ to the Father.

I will take my life into my hands and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
And my passion flow like rivers through the sky.

Could refer to Christ; the things He desires is our love.

And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
And wondering why.

The "why" referring to our sin and ingratitude?

A Few Glorious Hours

Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance...    --MacArthur's Park



The dew still clung to the grass as I headed out to bring back Sunday coffee & breakfast, a formality before setting up camp in the still-chill of this spring morning.

I consumed the Sunday paper with its tasty melange of articles, enjoying the pleasure of progress that paper affords with its separate sections. I had that old desire to cut out the good stuff for collection purposes ("Between the parted pages and were pressed...")

One of them felt especially winsome and wise to this non-fisherman:

The lifelong challenge for fishermen, moreover, is not so much to drink the most beer or escape the domestic ball and chain, but to increase knowledge and technique, to become more consistent with the passage of seasons and to earn the satisfaction that comes from mastering a skill.

Not that beer, great escapes and an occasional trophy are especially toxic byproducts.

Fishing, even when not catching, offers pleasures.

Nothing is amiss, for example, with the sight of ospreys and eagles, the feel on the skin of a warm sun on a chilly spring day, the sense of peace that a lazy summer sunset can bring, the pleasure of uninterrupted conversation, the bonds that grow during contented times among buddies, particularly when those buddies call their fishing partners “Mom” and “Dad.”

Part of what I love about a good Sunday paper is its hint of infinity, that is something that can’t be completely consumed. There is always more of it to read, even if just examining the minutiae of the baseball box scores.

Soon my wife left for church (I’d gone to a rare Saturday vigil Mass). I relaxed into the stirrups of my lawn chair and smoked a cigar and drank a Sprite. The privacy was of the quality that I didn’t have to go inside to pee and the sun was of the quality to create a pleasing drama of this perfect space. Even kitsch could move me; the fake humingbird figure caught my eye and I retrieved the cellphone camera to take a picture against the vast backdrop of lilac bushes and their resilient green. Oh so fullsome the leaves already!   All that sweet, green icing flowing down...