Category Archives: Culture

03.29.13
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“Go into all the world …”

Today is Good Friday.

This is the time of year when the energy level of Christian ministers drops toward zero. Palm Sunday features one version of the Passion, starting with Jesus Christ’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem and ending with his crucifixion in a conspiracy of the Jewish authorities and the Romans. Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday, relates the story of the Last Supper, which simultaneously was a Jewish Passover meal (because they were all Jews) and the first Christian Eucharist. Good Friday relates a different version of the Passion starting after the Last Supper.

Good Friday is followed by the Easter Vigil, after sundown of the Sabbath, one day after Joseph of Arimathea found a tomb in which to bury Jesus. Easter morning dawns, and Jesus’ female followers visit the tomb to finish the burial, only to see that there is no body. By Easter evening, the supposedly dead Jesus is appearing to his disciples.

The four versions of the Passion differ on some details — was the cock supposed to crow once or twice after Peter denied Jesus three times? — but the essentials can be found in each, and with more commonality than one might expect for an event recorded by four different authors.

One of my favorite parts of the story is chapter 24 of Luke, when two disciples, one named Cleopas, walking to a village named Emmaus, arguing over what they had been told had happened since Good Friday, get a mysterious visitor who asks them what that’s been going on. (Or, to paraphrase “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the visitor asks them to tell him what’s the buzz, tell him what’s happening.)

CLEOPAS: “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who doesn’t know the things that have happened there in these days?”

VISITOR: “What things?”

CLEOPAS: “The things concerning Jesus the Nazarene, a man who, with his powerful deeds and words, proved to be a prophet before God and all the people; and how our chief priests and rulers handed him over to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. Not only this, but it is now the third day since these things happened. Furthermore, some women of our group amazed us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back and said they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.”

Imagine being the fourth set of ears in that conversation. Of course, the mysterious visitor is able to clear Cleopas’ and his traveling companion’s minds about what they had heard, because, well, he was there for all of it.

The books of the New Testament after the Gospels show that following Jesus Christ was not only unpopular, but dangerous in the years after the Resurrection. Being a Christian is probably not dangerous today, at least in this country (although it certainly is elsewhere in the world), but living a truly Christian life isn’t particularly popular today either, as shown by who’s going, or not, to church these days.

For one thing, living a truly Christian life means your understanding that you’re not in charge, while being given a lifelong assignment (yes, responsibility without authority):
Matthew 28:18–19: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
Mark 16:15: “… Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

Which means what? One suggestion comes from N.T. Wright’s Simply Jesus:

The Beatitudes are the agenda for kingdom people. They are not simply about how to behave, so that God will do something nice to you. They are about the way in which Jesus wants to rule the world. He wants to do it through this sort of people — people, actually, just like himself (read the Beatitudes again and see). The Sermon on the Mount is a call to Jesus’ followers to take up their vocation as light to the world, as salt to the earth — in other words, as people through whom Jesus’ kingdom vision is to become a reality.

Wright’s last chapter tries to bridge the gap between social conservatives, who believe in avoiding sin yet confronting sin in others, and what Catholics call the “social Gospel,” Christ’s call to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and so on, in ways unlikely to satisfy hardcore adherents to those supposedly competing visions.

For those who think that’s challenging, add this: Helping others is not something to be left in the hands of government or nonprofit organizations. That’s your job as a Christian. It’s also your job as a Christian to live a virtuous life; it is not your job to call out others for (what you think are) their failings when you have failings yourself.

None of that is easy, which I suspect has a lot to do with why churches are shrinking in attendance. (Except, it seems, the nonaligned churches that don’t seem to ask very much of their attendees. Humans generally and Americans specifically seem to prefer easy and happy to reality.) The Bible does not promise Christians an easy, trouble-free, all-happy-endings life. Lent ends with Holy Week, but if it seems as though life is one big Lent, well, maybe there’s a reason.

03.23.13
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Turn on your lights! It’s Earth Hour!

Jon Gabriel explains why, instead of turning off your lights to commemorate Earth Hour at 8:30 p.m. local time, you should heed the advice of this headline:

Since 2007, environmental activists have promoted this Gaia-appeasing sacrifice to conserve energy and raise awareness about apocalyptic climate change.

But like many gimmicks, Earth Hour is designed to make people feel like they’re accomplishing something instead of actually accomplishing something.

The whole “awareness-raising” trend is annoying on general principle. Why raise awareness about fatal diseases when you can work to cure them? But what is hazy messaging for a public health campaign is decidedly counterproductive for the professed goals of this envirostunt. Earth Hour actually increases CO2 emissions.

Consider the activists’ recommendation of replacing electric lights with candles for an hour. Candles are made from paraffin, i.e., refined crude oil, and are far less efficient than electric bulbs — even those dastardly incandescent light bulbs our government is so helpfully seizing from us. You would need about 40 candles to match the light produced by a 40-watt bulb, but just one candle cancels out any theoretical CO2 reduction.

Then there’s the effect of a mass off-switch/on-switch across an electrical grid. Power companies still pump the same amount of energy despite a brief dip in consumption. But when a large number of people simultaneously increase consumption at the end of Earth Hour, a surge often requires engineers to fire up additional coal or oil-fueled resources. …

What really chafes is the flamboyant hypocrisy of Earth Hour advocates. “Let’s turn off our lights, then upload millions of tweets, photos and videos using our smartphones and computers!” Because where’s the fun in saving the planet if you can’t use electricity to brag about it every three minutes?

The facts show that Earth Hour is just another exercise in progressive posturing and self-congratulation. If conspicuous non-consumption saved the planet, we’d be able to run our cars on self-righteousness and moral preening. …

The counterproductive stunt of Earth Hour might make the anti-science Left feel better about themselves, but it only harms the planet and humanity at large. If activists want to improve the lives of the downtrodden, perhaps they can support the fracking boom that delivers clean, inexpensive natural gas to an energy-starved world.

Earth needs more light and progress, not more darkness and hypocrisy.

Gabriel quotes Bjørn Lomborg:

Electricity has given humanity huge benefits. Almost 3 billion people still burn dung, twigs, and other traditional fuels indoors to cook and keep warm, generating noxious fumes that kill an estimated 2 million people each year, mostly women and children. Likewise, just 100 years ago, the average American family spent six hours each week during cold months shoveling six tons of coal into the furnace (not to mention cleaning the coal dust from carpets, furniture, curtains, and bedclothes). In the developed world today, electric stoves and heaters have banished indoor air pollution.

“Similarly, electricity has allowed us to mechanize much of our world, ending most backbreaking work. The washing machine liberated women from spending endless hours carrying water and beating clothing on scrub boards. The refrigerator made it possible for almost everyone to eat more fruits and vegetables, and to stop eating rotten food, which is the main reason why the most prevalent cancer for men in the United States in 1930, stomach cancer, is the least prevalent now.

Mike Smith adds:

I’m grateful for my big screen television and the electricity that powers it so I can watch the Shockers versus Gonzaga. At this moment with 11:39 in the first half, it is tied 10-10.
I’m grateful for natural gas that is keeping my home nice and warm while it snows outside (it started again about 30 minutes ago). Natural gas is an excellent source of energy.
Thank you, Earth (and the Lord that made it!)
03.22.13
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The challenge: Write a sentence with these words

Death and Taxes discovered from  two sources — The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten, and the Obsolete Word of the Day blog — a list of words that are obsolete but should not be,  including:

Snoutfair: A person with a handsome countenance …

Wonder-wench: A sweetheart …

Groak: To silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them …

Spermologer: A picker-up of trivia, of current news, a gossip monger, what we would today call a columnist …

Englishable: That which may be rendered into English …

Resistentialism: The seemingly spiteful behavior shown by inanimate objects …

Bookwright: A writer of books; an author; a term of slight contempt …

Zafty: A person very easily imposed upon …

I’ve picked these eight words because it isn’t too hard to create a sentence using these words. For instance:

  • My wonder-wench thinks I am a snoutfair. (No, that’s not a comment about bacon. I think.)
  • I groak standing in front of a zafty I know.
  • My car didn’t start today, another example of the resistentialism of things I own.
  • I am a spermologer hoping to become a bookwright; each requires use of Englishable words.

 

03.19.13
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Argentina vs. Francis

The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady:

One might have expected a swell of pride from Argentine officialdom when the news broke that the nation has produced a man so highly esteemed around the world. Instead the Kirchner government’s pit bulls in journalism—men such as Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the guerrilla group known as the Montoneros and now an editor at the pro-government newspaper Pagina 12—immediately began a campaign to smear the new pontiff’s character and reputation at home and in the international news media.

The calumny is not new. Former members of terrorist groups like Mr. Verbitsky, and their modern-day fellow travelers in the Argentine government, have used the same tactics for years to try to destroy their enemies—anyone who doesn’t endorse their brand of authoritarianism. In this case they allege that as the Jesuits’ provincial superior in Argentina in the late 1970s, then-Father Bergoglio had links to the military government.

This is propaganda. …

Intellectually honest observers with firsthand knowledge of Argentina under military rule (1976-1983) are telling a much different story than the one pushed by Mr. Verbitsky and his ilk. One of those observers is Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize. Last week he told BBC Mundo that “there were bishops that were complicit with the dictatorship, but Bergoglio, no.” As to the charge that the priest didn’t do enough to free junta prisoners, Mr. Pérez Esquivel said: “I know personally that many bishops who asked the military government for the liberation of prisoners and priests and it was not granted.”

Former Judge Alicia Oliveira, who was herself fired by the military government and forced into hiding to avoid arrest, told the Argentine newspaper Perfil last week that during those dark days she knew Father Bergoglio well and that “he helped many people get out of the country.” In one case, she says there was a young man on the run who happened to look like the Jesuit. “He gave him his identification card and his [clergy attire] so that he could escape.” …

None of this matters to those trying to turn Argentina into the next Venezuela. What embitters them is that Father Bergoglio believed that Marxism (and the related “liberation theology”) was antithetical to Christianity and refused to embrace it in the 1970s. That put him in the way of those inside the Jesuit order at the time who believed in revolution. It also put him at odds with the Montoneros, who were maiming, kidnapping and killing civilians in order to terrorize the population. Many of those criminals are still around and hold fast to their revolutionary dreams.

For them, the new pope remains a meddlesome priest. In the slums where the populist Mrs. Kirchner claims to be a champion of the poor, Francis is truly beloved because he lives the gospel. From the pulpit, with the Kirchners in the pews, he famously complained of self-absorbed politicians. He didn’t name names, but the shoe fit.

 

03.15.13
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The sacred and the profane

My high school political science teacher, now a blogger too, passes on this from The Daily Beast:

God is dead in literature. According to conventional wisdom and prevailing perceptions, Christian themes, along with faith outside the detached analytical realm of sociology, no longer have a role in the narrative of contemporary novelists. …

Let us consider an entire “genre.” Crime fiction weaves its tale in the threshold between right and wrong, just and unjust, good and evil. It is because of its naked confrontation with philosophy and ethics, and its depiction of drifters, confidence men, femme fatales, petty criminals, serial killers, and agents of the law beset by iniquity and caught in the web of moral turpitude, that it is so effectively and naturally able to deal with doubt, faith, and the inner combat of spiritual warfare. The case for faith in fiction is to be made by those who deal with cracking cases for a living—the fictional detectives, private investigators, and troubled protagonists who inhabit the scandalous, seductive, and serpentine setting of noir.

Crime and noir have always told the story of people who decide to cross an invisible but palpable moral line. It then measures the wreckage—physical, emotional, and spiritual—that results from the voluntary crossing over into another ethical universe—a colder, tougher, and uglier universe. These same questions haunt the tales of the Bible and the lives of the saints. …

[Lawrence Block's] Hit Me hits shelves on the heels of the release of Walter Mosley’s new e-book,The Parishioner. Mosley is most famous for his Easy Rawlins mystery series—Devil in a Blue Dress was adapted into a film starring Denzel Washington. In Mosley’s new book, Xavier Rule is a reformed gangster attempting to transform his life from criminality to responsibility under the guiding hand of Father Frank, a mysterious and often autocratic preacher at a secluded church in California. …

Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch series and The Lincoln Lawyer, which served as the basis for the movie starring Matthew McConaughey, navigates noir with a spiritual compass, and, like Mosley, uses crime not only to tell a suspenseful story but also to provoke the reader into evaluating evidence demonstrating the veracity of concepts far larger than any criminal case. The search for redemption and the opportunity for moral transformation provide the pulse to Connelly’s fiction. Mickey Haller, the protagonist of The Lincoln Lawyer, believes that there is “nothing scarier than an innocent client,” and is content to represent obvious criminals, steadily amassing wealth as a defense attorney. When he discovers that he was partially responsible for the conviction of an innocent man, and when he is forced to confront the pure evil of a guilty man, he surrenders to a moral calling. He determines that his life must have meaning.

Connelly’s most famous character, Harry Bosch, is named after the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, whose religious paintings depict the hellish consequences of earthly sins and, with a frightening blend of realism and surrealism, took on apocalyptic dimensions in their representation of spiritual torment, the battle for justice, and the judgment of God. The homicide detective, like the painter, is motivated by a sense of fairness formed by faith and a nonnegotiable moral code. His stone-cold consistency is the source of his virtue and his vice—he is comfortable with bending the law in an “ends justifies means” philosophy of law enforcement.

Connelly and Mosley prove that hands of sufficient delicacy and muscularity can transform the genre of crime fiction into the art of literature. No man is more adept at accomplishing such a feat, however, than James Lee Burke. Burke is the winner of two Edgar Awards and is most famous for chronicling the life of David Robicheaux, a New Orleans homicide detective turned New Iberia sheriff’s deputy. Robicheaux is a recovering alcoholic and practicing Catholic who is married to a former nun and is guided by a system of philosophy that combines hardboiled realism and incorruptible mysticism. Burke’s stories might begin with a simple homicide or rape but ultimately feel as if they are anecdotes from the Book of Revelation.

The Tin Roof Blowdown, released in 2007, is set in the Armageddon atmosphere of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Robicheaux must apprehend a pair of rapists, prevent a vigilante from creating more death and destruction, and save the life of a priest friend with a morphine addiction. Robicheaux believes that the rapist and the priest are equal in the eyes of God. The rapist hand-delivers a letter of apology to try to make amends for a crime that can likely never be forgiven, and he prays for forgiveness and redemption before dying. In one of the most moving conclusions to any book, Robicheaux believes that the rapist and the priest, who died in the days after the hurricane, are “safe inside a pewter vessel that is as big as the hand of God.” …

“Learn to love sinners.” That’s Catholic priest and author Robert Barron’s advice to his seminary students if they ever hope to become effective priests. God is not dead in literature. He is hiding in the stories of sinners.

03.14.13
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Benedict XVI, Francis I

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan was blogging from the Vatican before the cardinals chose the next pope:

There is a sense too, at least among American Catholics I talk to, that this is in some new way a crucial moment for the church, even though we don’t understand or cannot name exactly why. It’s not only The Scandals, the Vatican bank, that source of half a century’s rumors, or Vatileaks. It’s not only the three cardinals who reportedly made a dossier on the last, bound in red leather and locked away like the third secret of Fatima for the next pope’s perusal. Those cardinals—again, reportedly—wrote of rivalries and ambitions. But what exactly does that mean? Who are the rivals and what are they fighting over? Ambitions for what, to do what? We are all wondering about this.

Anyway, I talk to a lot of Catholics who are publicly sanguine and privately unsettled.

All this is at odds with the burly bonhomie shown in public by those such as New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who in his few days in Rome has always been seen laughing and reaching out, joking and teasing. It’s a good thing to see. I want to feel the way he seems to feel. Maybe by the end of the conclave I will. …

… there’s a lot of ignorant, tendentious and even aggressive media chatter about the church right now, and it’s starting to grate. Church observers are blabbering away on cable and network news telling the church to get with the program, throwing around words like “gender” and “celibacy” and “pedophile” and phrases like “irrelevant to the modern world.” …

Right now every idiot in town feels free to tell the church to get hopping, and they do it in a new way, with a baldness that occasionally borders on the insulting. Whatever their faith or lack of it they feel free to critique loudly and in depth, to the degree they are capable of depth. I have been critical of the church over the sex scandals for longer than a decade. Here’s one column—but I write of it because I love it and seek to see it healthy, growing and vital as it brings Christ into the world. Some of the church’s critics don’t seem to be operating from affection and respect but something else, or some things else.

When critics mean to be constructive, they bring an air of due esteem and occasional sadness to their criticisms, and offer informed and thoughtful suggestions as to ways the old church might right itself. They might even note, with an air of gratitude free of crowd-pleasing sanctimony, that critics must, in fairness, speak of those parts of the church that most famously work—the schools that teach America’s immigrants, the charities, the long embrace of the most vulnerable—and outweigh a whole world of immediate criticisms.

But when they just prattle on with their indignant words—gender, celibacy, irrelevant—well, they’re probably not trying to be constructive. One might say they’re being vulgar, ignorant and destructive, spoiled too. They think they’re brave, or outspoken, or something. They don’t have enough insight into themselves to notice they’d never presume to instruct other great faiths.

CNN found someone who actually knows something about the church:

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina, the new pope, is breaking historic ground by choosing the name Francis.

It’s the first time the name is being used by a pope, said CNN Vatican expert John Allen.

Pope Francis chose his name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi because he is a lover of the poor, said Vatican deputy spokesman Thomas Rosica.

“Cardinal Bergoglio had a special place in his heart and his ministry for the poor, for the disenfranchised, for those living on the fringes and facing injustice,” Rosica said.

St. Francis, one of the most venerated figures in the Roman Catholic Church, was known for connecting with fellow Christians, Rosica added.

Allen described the name selection as “the most stunning” choice and “precedent shattering.” …

The name symbolizes “poverty, humility, simplicity and rebuilding the Catholic Church,” Allen said. “The new pope is sending a signal that this will not be business as usual.”

Wigderson Library & Pub (and remember that Catholics started colleges and celebrated the wine part of the Eucharist):

One of the advantages of being Catholic is that, instead of offering an opinion on who should be Pope, we’re more or less left to accept and offer prayers that the Cardinals make the right choice. That said, obviously there was a rooting interest for Cardinal Timothy Dolan. God must have other plans. I suspect the White House, as much as it prays, was hoping Dolan would become Pope, too, if only to get him to move to Rome. …

It was interesting to listen to the speculation regarding the meaning of the name Francis. It was like watching a funeral from the Soviet Union and trying to figure out the significance of who is on the reviewing stand.

What we know of Pope Francis is that he’s a Jesuit, he’s an Argentine, and he’s a humble and faithful man. He’s the first Pope from the New World.

Pope Francis is a stauch defender of the unborn, even believing that politicians that support abortion and euthanasia should be denied Communion. That should make for an interesting visit by American Vice President Joe Biden to the Pope’s inaugural on Tuesday.

He’s committed to ministering to the poor and unfortunate, but he’s not a Liberation Theologian. He is not afraid of conflict with secular authorities over gay marriage and adoption.

He’s not a young man, yet Pope Francis is hoped to be a reformer of the institutions of the Church.

The London Daily Mail adds:

While he is unlikely to soften the Church’s approach to issues such as contraception, he has spent many years administering to the poorest in the land, endearing himself to them as ‘Father Jorge’.

Though unwaveringly orthodox, he has never closed his mind to pastoral  realities. Six months ago, he delivered a blistering attack on priests who refuse to baptise children born out of wedlock, calling it — in his own typical style of phraseology — a form of ‘rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism’. …

He has spoken out against liberal abortion laws and gay adoption, arguing that it infringed the rights of children to both a mother and father.

This earned him a rebuke from Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

But he has shown deep compassion for Aids victims, once visiting a hospice to kiss and wash the feet of 12 Aids patients.

At the same time he has spoken passionately about the importance of pastoral care for divorcees. …

He considers helping the neediest in society, rather than ideological battles about religious doctrines, the essential business of the Church.

He has labelled those fellow Church leaders who enjoy the trappings of high office as hypocrites, saying they forget that Jesus bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes.

This sort of pastoral work, aimed at capturing more souls and building the flock, is an essential skill for any religious leader in the modern era, says Bergoglio’s authorised biographer, Sergio Rubin. …

Eight years ago, when he came second in the papal ballot, there were some doubts about his toughness. Why this should change now is yet to be explained.

But, in electing him, the cardinals undoubtedly feel that, with his Italian roots, he will be able to take on the Vatican bureaucracy known as the Curia  — which has been subject to accusations of money laundering. And that he will take a tough line on the sexual scandals which continue to embarrass the Church worldwide. …

The hope is that he will not put up with the cover-ups of recent years. We shall see. Certainly, he has never worked in the Vatican, so he has much to learn.

But his appeal is in drawing respect from both conservatives and moderates, and for his deep spirituality. In an address last year he said Argentina was being harmed by demagoguery, corruption and totalitarianism. …

And why did he choose to call himself Pope Francis? After 13th-century St Francis of Assisi, who set out to ‘rebuild a Church’.

The funniest unfunny comment comes from Tim Nerenz:

Be happy that the Pope is not elected in Wisconsin – a recall website would already be up and running, some Dane County judge would set aside the Conclave’s decision, the GAB would certify the votes of 13,000 new Cardinals bussed up from Illinois, all that smoke would be blamed on the Mining Bill, and the newly elected Pope Sarah Manski would immediately resign and move to California.
03.11.13
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The Constitution and the police

Washington County Sheriff Dale Schmidt has some interesting things to say to his fellow law enforcement leaders, specifically the Milwaukee police chief (from 620WTMJ.com):

Recent comments on gun control by Milwaukee Police Chief [Ed] Flynn highlight, for me, a problem with law enforcement in this country.  Too often, law enforcement leaders confuse all citizens with criminals, and see themselves as “kings” of their jurisdiction instead of employees of the people.

In 2009, when Wisconsin’s Attorney General issued his advisory memo on open carry, it created little discussion within my department.  That is because we already knew it was legal and protected by the Constitution.  Chief Flynn’s position quoted from JSOnline was, “my message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it.”  Sounds like a man who makes no distinction between law abiding citizens and criminals.  That is one example, but I believe other law enforcement leaders operate under the “end justifies the means” policing model, Constitution be damned.

Law enforcement in America was never supposed to be about “ruling the people.”  We are hired by “the people” to do that part of crime fighting they cannot do themselves.  The citizens never gave up their protection against unlawful search of their persons, or seizure of their property, or the right to own guns and defend themselves, in that process.  Does that make it harder to ferret out the criminals amongst us and arrest them?  Yes it does, but it is how we protect our free society from a tyrannical government.  I believe Chief Flynn is truly concerned about the safety of his officers, but law abiding citizens are not the threat, and any law to improve officer safety must first be Constitutional.

The way it is supposed to work, is that the citizens elect people to run the government.  Those elected people then hire police chiefs and officers to enforce society’s laws within the confines of the Constitution.  In the case of Sheriffs, the people elect them directly.  Either way, we are all accountable to the people, we are not their rulers.  The law abiding people are on our side and we should be focused on protecting their Constitutional rights, not limiting them!  How did this get so backward?

The assertion, by President Obama, Senator Feinstein and Chief Flynn, that if certain types of guns or features of guns are banned, then violent crime will go away, is a fantasy. More importantly, they should not even be talking about it because the people hired them to protect that right.  We should be talking about how to identify and stop people before they commit mass murders.  We should be talking about why criminals remain on the street after multiple convictions for violent crimes.  And we should be talking about how to change the sub-culture in this country that places no value on human life or personal responsibility. …

What if after Sandy Hook, President Obama had said, “this is bad; dangerous people are committing mass killings in public places, drug addicts are robbing banks, pharmacies and gas stations, and the Drug Cartels are operating in our central city neighborhoods.  The violence in this country is more than our law enforcement people can handle right now.  We work for you, and we need your help.”   Might that have produced something more positive for this country than a threat to turn half its citizens into criminals for owning guns?

Rotten and disturbed individuals commit violent crimes, and that is where law enforcement leaders need to focus their energies.  We were elected and hired by the people, and then took an oath to protect their Constitutional rights.  I suggest we try a fresh angle on violent crime by inviting the law abiding public to be a part of the solution instead of carpet bombing their individual rights.  It would do Sheriffs, Chiefs and the President well to remember Sir Robert Peel’s 7th Principle of Policing:

 Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

 

02.26.13
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It’s for the children

James Wigderson:

State Senate President Mike Ellis came out again on Sunday in opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s plan to expand school choice to districts with two or more failing schools. Ellis claimed on Up Front with Mike Gousha that he supported the original school choice program in Milwaukee when it only served people below the poverty line in a district that was failing. However, he now opposes the expansion of school choice, claiming it “goes beyond the poverty and beyond the failing school concept.”

This is, of course, incorrect, as it allows students to apply for choice programs in their districts if the district has two or more failing schools.

Using the Neenah School District as an example, Ellis said, “Neenah has thirteen school buildings. If two or more of those school buildings have a D or an F on their report card, under the Walker plan the entire school district is considered a failing school district.”

Of course Ellis’ objection is just absurd. Buildings don’t fail. School districts fail when they fail to teach children. If there are children that aren’t learning in the district, of course the school district is failing them regardless of the building. …

Ellis seems to believe that every student that are under the maximum household income level would want to participate in a private school choice program. If he truly believes that, it’s a poor commentary on the school district. Contrary to the example that Ellis gives, if a student is doing well in a school, regardless of the grade given to the school, it would be unlikely for the parents to move that child.

On the other hand, if a child is not doing well in a school that has been given an “A” rating by the state Department of Public Instruction, then it’s cold comfort to the parents to know that some students are succeeding when their child is not. Far better to match the student to the appropriate school than it is to worry about what the cost might be to the district.

Even if Ellis was correct that the proposed expansion of school choice might somehow block an impoverished child in a failing school from participating because of the lottery, that’s an argument against having the enrollment caps, not scrapping the choice program itself.

After all, the point of state aid to local school districts is not to build buildings, hire administrators, and to make superintendent jobs easier. The whole point of state aid is to provide the means for educating each of Wisconsin’s children. …

The latest MacIver Student Census shows us that 26% of children statewide exercise some form of choice and an incredible 81% of children in Milwaukee use choice in education. We have statewide open enrollment and public charter schools that allow parents an opportunity to find the best educational fit for their child. We even have online public charter schools that attract students from across the state looking for an educational alternative. One of those online charter public schools is in Ellis’ senate district in Appleton.

The reality is that school choice is a bargain for the state’s taxpayers. Ellis is correct that the voucher is only $6,442 currently. However, Wisconsin spent $11,364 per pupil in 2009-2010 according to census data. The Green Bay school district in Ellis’ district spends $11,194 per student. Meanwhile studies have shown that graduation rates are actually higher in choice schools. …

While Ellis complains that there is a lack of local input by local school districts about allowing school choice, Ellis and other state legislators are the ones responsible for the stewardship of state tax dollars that are allocated for education. Ellis’ plan to hold referendums in individual school districts to see if they wish to participate in the choice programs would be an abdication of that responsibility and would only invite the mass chaos of Madison last year to every community under consideration.

Wisconsin should watch the Republicans in the state Senate, who now have an opportunity to change from an antiquated system of moving children through a failing mass production model of education to one that allows for meeting the child’s individual educational needs.

We need to ask our legislators why, under the current system, funding a school building is more important than funding an individual child, no matter where he or she goes to find the best education to meet their needs.

 

02.14.13
by

After Benedict

One of the fun things about working in the news media is the unpredictable nature of news.

For instance, no one going to work in a radio or TV news operation early Monday morning probably could have predicted the news that Pope Benedict XVI was stepping down at the end of the month.

Or, as cartoonist Joe Heller put it, “You’re giving up WHAT for Lent?”

Because we’re nearing March Madness, some creative soul came up with this:

(I had no idea there were candidates from Dubuque and Dyersville, Iowa. And someone’s going to do some time in Purgatory for “Flagellant Four.”)

Those of us who enjoy end-of-the-world predictions now are obligated to bring up St. Malachy and his papal list, as NBCNews.com reports:

Just when you thought it was safe to go out of the bunker, there’s a fresh wave of doomsday buzz over a purported 12th-century prophecy suggesting that the next pope will be the last pope before the end of the world. St. Malachy’s “Prophecy of the Popes” has no credence in the Roman Catholic Church, but its effect could well be longer-lasting than the hype that surrounded the 2012 Maya apocalypse — especially if the papal conclave goes with one of the favored candidates for Benedict XVI’s successor.

The text that’s been attributed to Malachy came to light in 1595, in a book by Benedictine monk Arnold de Wyon. Supposedly, Malachy experienced a vision of future popes during a trip to Rome in 1139, and wrote down a series of 112 cryptic phrases that described each pope in turn. The text was said to have lain unnoticed in Rome’s archives until Wyon published it.

Doomsday fans have found ways to link each phrase to a corresponding pope through the centuries. That includes John Paul II, who is associated with phrase No. 110, “From the labor of the sun,” because he was born on the day of a solar eclipse and was entombed on the day of a solar eclipse as well. Benedict XVI, No. 111, is supposedly “glory of the olive” because some members of a branch of the monastic order founded by St. Benedict are known as Olivetans.

Then there’s No. 112: “In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit … Peter the Roman, who will nourish the sheep in many tribulations; when they are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The end.”

The end? This could be the beginning for a doomsday meme that hangs over a whole generation, if it’s taken seriously. …

But if the coming papal conclave really wanted to drum up the doomsday talk, as well as sales for “Petrus Romanus,” all they’d have to do is elect one of the leading candidates: Ghanaian CardinalPeter Turkson, a member of the Roman Curia. Even though church tradition would forbid any pope from taking the name Peter II, Turkson could arguably be described as Peter the Roman. Others suggest that he could be the “young red black one” mentioned in the similarly cryptic doomsday prophecies of Nostradamus.

The first I heard about Malachy was in 1978, after the death of Pope Paul VI, when there were just four popes left on his list. Pope John Paul I lasted one month after his installation, and that left three popes on his list. Of course, then John Paul II lasted through my confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church, high school and college graduations, my marriage, the birth of two of our three children, and my departure from the Roman Catholic Church.

I bring up that last fact to segue into my counterargument for the Biblical plague of inaccurate and wrong-headed media reporting and commentary about the church since Monday.

From a political perspective, the Roman Catholic Church is an unusual mixture of social conservatism and economic progressivism. (Kind of the opposite of libertarian.) The church is officially against both abortion and the death penalty. The church’s economic teachings are certainly comfortably within the Democratic Party, but then there’s that abortion thing. One reason for the development of “cafeteria Catholics” is that there are Catholics who are social conservatives but don’t agree with the church’s economic stances, and there are Catholics who are economic liberals but don’t agree with the church’s more conservative social positions.

The church’s influence in this country is remarkable because the Catholic Church is, to coin a term, counter-American. (I use that term specifically instead of “anti-American” — the former means, to me, the opposite of American values; the latter means opposition to American values, and I am not suggesting that.) I would never argue that Catholics cannot be Americans or vice versa. (The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion.) But the Roman Catholic Church is based on authority, largely top-down. Churches are assigned priests by their diocese’s bishops; they have no say in who they get. The pope chooses cardinals and bishops. The pope is said to be infallible on spiritual matters, and priests are the authority within their churches. (That last point is reinforced more severely in some dioceses and churches than others.)

The United States was created as the very antithesis of top-down, undemocratic, infallible authority. The Episcopal Church spun off from the Church of England the same year George Washington became president. The Episcopal Church (the most common religion of American presidents, by the way, including Franklin Roosevelt, who remained his church’s senior warden all 12 years as president, and,  most recently, George H.W. Bush) was organized like the federal government, or perhaps vice versa. The federal government has the president, the Episcopal Church has the Presiding Bishop; the feds have the U.S. Senate, the church has the House of Bishops; the feds have the House of Representatives, the church has the House of Delegates. It could safely be said that everything wrong with the Episcopal Church mirrors everything wrong with the federal government, because human institutions are inevitably flawed.

You have read expressions of the misbegotten belief that a new pope will, or should, lead to a new wave of liberalism within the church. (Usually expressed by those who believe more liberalism is necessary for the church.) The atheist empire of Madison, specifically Dave Cieslewicz, is a reliable source of anti-Catholicism:

There is no more tragic organization on the face of the earth than the Catholic Church.

An outfit with incredible resources and influence, it has squandered both on the hideous scandal of its massive pedophile cover-ups and its mindless, hierarchical, anachronistic rigidity. If this were a government, it would have been toppled long ago. If this were a business, its shareholders would have shown its managers the door with enthusiasm. …

You probably think of my old religion as the anti-abortion faith because that’s what the conservative old men who run the church choose to emphasize. But this could just as easily be a “nuns on the bus” faith if only the men in power were of that inclination. And if it were a “social gospel” faith, I might even contribute a buck or two to a cause I could believe in — though nothing, not even good liberal causes, could drag me into a church for anything but weddings or funerals.

So Benedict XVI is stepping aside. That’s good, but there’s really not much reason to rejoice because the cardinals who will choose his successor are as conservative as he is. But you never know. Sometimes, with a lifetime appointment a guy will surprise you. President Eisenhower never expected Earl Warren to lead a court that dramatically expanded civil liberties and personal freedom.

My point is that whoever replaces Benedict can’t possibly be any worse and might be a little better. Or he could be spectacularly better. The Pope of the future who will be remembered is the Pope who will have the good sense to see that there’s nothing in the teachings of Jesus that should prevent women or married people from being priests. And once that threshold is crossed, once the church is no longer held in a chokehold by bitter, conservative old men, it can be unleashed to do real good in the world.

There is a practical reason why a more liberal shift is unlikely. Pope John Paul II was the most dynamic pope in the lifetime of anyone reading this blog, but he was a conservative as the church defines the term. John Paul II appointed the cardinals, who in turn appointed Benedict XVI, another conservative. The next pope, whether he’s from Italy, or this continent, or Africa (as the Irish bookies apparently are betting), will be another conservative, whether Catholics like that or not.

It should be obvious, but apparently isn’t even to many Catholics, that the Roman Catholic Church is not a democracy, has never been a democracy, and will never be a democracy. (The term “never” can be comfortably used to describe an institution that has been around for 2,000 years or so.) The church does not answer to man. The church believes that life begins at conception, and therefore any birth control that causes the death of a fertilized egg is murder. The church believes that priests and nuns are married to the church, so do not expect to see married Catholic priests (beyond its outreach to married Episcopal and Anglican priests). The church believes that priests, bishops and popes are descended from Jesus Christ and His disciples, so do not expect to see woman priests. The church believes that marriage is a sacrament, that spouses worship God based on how they treat each other, so the church is not going to approve of divorce. The church believes the first (though not only) purpose of marriage is children, so the church will not approve of same-sex marriage. The church believes all life is sacred, so it is not going to approve of euthanasia or the death penalty.

You may read the preceding paragraph and say you disagree with the church’s positions there or on other issues, and as an American that is your right. (God gave us free will, so that’s not just an American right.) But the Catholic Church is not an American institution, it’s not a democracy, and it does not answer to you. Your choice, it seems, is to accept the church’s positions — all of them — or leave.

You’ll notice early in this blog that I describe myself as a former Catholic. I did not leave the church because its stance on a particular issue disagreed with mine. I am a big admirer of John Paul II because of his role (as well as the roles of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher) in ending the evil that was the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact countries.

Since my departure, however, that decision to leave has been affirmed numerous times in numerous ways. As someone raised in the post-Vatican II church, I find the new Mass a step backward. I’ve attended Latin High Masses, and I get very little out of a Mass in which I can only guess at what the priest, standing with his back to the parishioners, is saying. (What was the purpose of Pentecost again?) The church mishandled child sex abuse by priests and nuns (as, to be fair, numerous other institutions mishandled sexual abuse by authority figures), simply because the church should be held to a much higher standard.

The church tolerates no dissent, and that’s simply wrong in a country whose very existence (endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights, remember) is the result of dissent, and whose citizens’ right to dissent — as well as our right to be a member of any church we like — is in the First Amendment of our Constitution. If God gave us free will, God obviously tolerates differences of opinion. Jesus Christ’s three years of ministry certainly were not about blind, unthinking obedience to any man, whether or not he had a religious title.

It is not that the church — any church, and indeed any institution — will ever be perfect, or should be expected to be perfect. Perfection is impossible in anything where human beings are involved. It’s not that I expect the Catholic Church to change, either. You are more likely to be buried in the church than to see change in the church. There is some comfort in seeing a 2,000-year-old institution, until its resistance to improvement hurts the church and its worthwhile mission on Earth.