The Current Campaign

On a List I joined, some are posting deep thoughts and opinions on the current contenders. I'm out it. As many have seen, my political views – for state or for church – are all bollixed up in my loathing for and fear of neocons. To me they are not conservatives, whom I like and respect. Nor do I claim the term "liberal" for myself, and refuse "L" for "Left." Rejecting all pigeon-holed charismas of those on the left and those on the right, I refuse to use those terms. But "neocons" to me is an intransigent, deadly, implacable term that evokes loathing and fear in me. So, my opinions are worthless, because emotional, immature, not worthy of distinguished, professional discussion. A lot of pros on this List, you know.

You may remember an earlier piece in which I displayed my instinctive – I prefer intuitive – dislike of Barrack Obama. Vox et praeterea nihil. Hoping, against hope as it turned out, that you would readily see that it takes one to know one, for I am such a vox myself. I would never ever run for office and see too many of my selves wielding such power. Thus, my dismissal of Obama. Pretty simple: I just don't like him, and could spin out justifications, but that isn't necessary. There are a whole bunch of people I just don't like – without the need to rattle off a long line of reasons – just as there are another whole bunch – much, much larger, by the way – whom I do like and don't need reasons to justify their attraction for me.

As for McCain, he has terrified me ever since he became a walking POW on the public political stage. (I was graced by two students at Sophia: Major Tracy and Captain Evans, ( each, US Army ret.). Both were POWs of the Japanese during WWII. They never waved it as their medal of honor. They took almost all my courses, one each semester over the three years. I called them "My Uncles." We loved each other.) From the first time I saw and heard McCain on TV, I felt fear. He is a neocon, always was, always will be, and that's before we knew what neocons were, cloaked as they were back then in Goldwater Arizonaism, catchy, nice for those retired. Spiffy eyeglasses. Never thought Barry was a neocon. Sort of admired him for his conservatism. Not so with Reagan, I have to confess, for he was just on stage all the time, a fake, always in need of a script. Good delivery of another's lines.

Today's neocons are Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Cheney, and they terrify me. They are destroying America, unless they have already finished the job. There are several neocons splattered throughout the RCC Hierarchy, and they terrify me, too. Neocons are comfortable with Absolute Power, enjoy the thrill of the yield before its wield. Bush is not one; neocons are smart, intelligent.

With all that, avoiding the campaign of the Democrat Vox et praeterea with the Republican neocon, I have no vote. Just fear. The people will choose, but there isn't much choice.

For state, I'll wait four years for a good and decent Republican candidate to duel with a good and decent Democrat to risk his/her life and reputation and offer themselves. For church, I'll wait out another lifetime, until another Bishop Geoffrey Robinson comes along to give the current Geoffrey a little support and companionship, with a goodly bunch of us people-people of God stepping pertly along beside them. Not all hierarchs are neocons. But, then again, neo-conservatism doesn't need many, just a few. That's why they are so terrifying. Those with nothing but a Vox don't stand a chance. Whenever I concoct a "composition of place" – thanks to Ignatian meditation techniques – of Barrack Obama in debate with Douglas Feith, I don't snicker at the godawfulness of it all. I cringe.

Speaking of such "compositions of places," my innocent way of looking at left and right and in between is not, definitely not, the linear way of picturing "L" on one far end and "R" way down at the other end. That's stupid. Adults do that, the easier to get rid of irksome ones by pushing them farther and further away. My "composition" of politicalness in people is a circle, the political leanings being dots on the circumference, where "L" and "R" are never as far apart as in the false, fake linear projection pundits favor. If some think of me as "L", so be it, that's their opinion, but I stand right next to an "R," holding her hand. Touch is the most important of the senses, you know. Easy on a circumference, impossible on a straight line stretching through the universe. Ever stop to think that in outer space, the path is always an orbit. It's only down here on Earth, once known as Gaia -- a personification of Earth actually from Greek mythology -- that we think we think linearly. And that's the bollix.

 

From today's Truthout:

 

Make No Mistake: McCain's a Neocon

Sunday 08 June 2008

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by: Robert Parry, Consortium News

John McCain may fancy himself a maverick, but according to Robert Parry, he's a Neocon through and through.

 

 

    Since clinching the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain has sought to hide the forest of his neoconservative alignment with George W. Bush amid the trees of details, such as stressing differences over military tactics used in Iraq.

    But the larger reality should be clear: McCain is a hard-line neoconservative who buys into Bush's "preemptive war" theories abroad and his concept of an all-powerful "unitary executive" at home.

     From McCain's pre-Iraq invasion speeches to his campaign's recent embrace of Bush's imperial presidency, American voters should realize that if they choose John McCain, they will be locking in at least four more years of war with much of the Islamic world while selling out the Founders' vision of a democratic Republic where no one is above the law.

    Take, for instance, an address that McCain gave to the Munich Conference on Security Policy on Feb. 2, 2002. In the speech - with the ambitious title, "From Crisis to Opportunity: American Internationalism and the New Atlantic Order" - the Arizona senator laid out the "full monte" of a neocon agenda.

    In those heady days after the U.S. ouster of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, McCain hailed "a new American internationalism" designed "to end safe harbor for terrorists anywhere, to aggressively target rogue regimes that threaten us with weapons of mass destruction, and to consolidate freedom's gains through institutions that reflect our values."

    To McCain, this meant that the United States had a fundamental right to invade any country on earth that was viewed as an actual or potential threat, a theory of American exceptionalism to international law that was at the heart of Bush's strategy of "preemptive war."

    "Americans believe we have a mandate to defeat and dismantle the global terrorist network that threatens both Europe and America," McCain said. "As our President has said, this network includes not just the terrorists but the states that make possible their continued operation.

    "Many of these are rogue regimes that possess or are developing weapons of mass destruction which threaten Europeans and Americans alike. We in America learned the hard way that we can never again wait for our enemies to choose their moment. The initiative is now ours, and we are seizing it."

    Neocon Forerunner

    McCain even presented himself as a forerunner to Bush's neoconservative policies.

    "Several years ago, I and many others argued that the United States, in concert with willing allies, should work to undermine from within and without outlaw regimes that disdain the rules of international conduct and whose internal dysfunction threatened other nations," McCain said.

    "Just this week, the American people heard our President articulate a policy to defeat the 'axis of evil' that threatens us with its support for terror and development of weapons of mass destruction," McCain said in reference to Bush's warning to Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

    "Dictators that harbor terrorists and build these weapons are now on notice that such behavior is, in itself, a casus belli. Nowhere is such an ultimatum more applicable than in Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

    McCain then reprised what turned out to be the bogus case for invading Iraq.

    "Almost everyone familiar with Saddam's record of biological weapons development over the past two decades agrees that he surely possesses such weapons. He also possesses vast stocks of chemical weapons and is known to have aggressively pursued, with some success, the development of nuclear weapons," McCain said.

    "Terrorist training camps exist on Iraqi soil, and Iraqi officials are known to have had a number of contacts with al-Qaeda. These were probably not courtesy calls," McCain added in the smug, sarcastic tone common to that period.

    As it turned out, the "vast stocks" of chemical weapons and the prospect of nuclear weapons were non-existent. The "terrorist training camps" on Iraqi soil were hostile to Hussein's secular regime and were located outside Baghdad's control in areas protected by the U.S.-British-enforced "no-fly zone."

    Evidence collected after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 revealed that Saddam Hussein rebuffed overtures from al-Qaeda, which he regarded as an enemy in the Arab world. Those contacts were not even "courtesy calls."

    Rush to War

    However, in February 2002, McCain was a leading voice in the neocon rush for war in Iraq, as an extension of Bush's "war on terror."

    "The next front is apparent, and we should not shirk from acknowledging it," McCain said. "A terrorist resides in Baghdad, with the resources of an entire state at his disposal, flush with cash from illicit oil revenues and proud of a decade-long record of defying the international community's demands that he come clean on his programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.

    "A day of reckoning is approaching. Not simply for Saddam Hussein, but for all members of the Atlantic community, whose governments face the choice of ending the threat we face every day from this rogue regime or carrying on as if such behavior, in the wake of September 11th, were somehow still tolerable.

    "The Afghan campaign set a precedent, and provided a model: the success of air power, combined with Special Operations forces working together with indigenous opposition forces, in waging modern war.

    "The next phase of the war on terror can build on this model, but we also must learn from its limitations. More American boots on the ground may be required to prevent the escape of terrorists we target in the future, and we should all be mindful that such a commitment might entail higher casualties than we have suffered in Afghanistan," McCain continued.

    "The most compelling defense of war is the moral claim that it allows the victors to define a stronger and more enduring basis for peace. Just as September 11th revolutionized our resolve to defeat our enemies, so has it brought into focus the opportunities we now have to secure and expand freedom."

    McCain's full embrace of this neocon global theory - both in its grandiose substance and its grandiloquent rhetoric - marked the over-the-top hubris that contributed to the suppression of any serious pre-Iraq War debate in the United States and then to the ill-considered rush to invade Iraq.

    As the war in Iraq turned sour and anti-Americanism swept the Middle East, McCain began criticizing the Bush administration not for its imperial overreach but for not reaching even farther. McCain began advocating a larger U.S. expeditionary force to pacify Iraq, a policy that gave rise to the "surge."

    "League of Democracies"

    Despite these tactical differences, McCain has shown no sign of rethinking his vision of an alliance of "willing" nations going around the world challenging and replacing disfavored governments. Indeed, he has made this neocon concept a centerpiece of his presidential campaign.

    The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has proposed a "League of Democracies," which would apply economic and military pressure on "rogue states" when the United Nations Security Council refuses to do so.

    Though McCain has dressed up his League of Democracies in pretty language about respecting international law and spreading freedom, its essence is to make permanent Bush's "coalition of the willing" concept used in Iraq.

    McCain insists his League won't supplant the Security Council, but it would do just that, fulfilling a long-held neocon dream of voiding the international system that U.S. leaders fashioned after World War II to enforce the Nuremberg principle that aggressive war was the "supreme" international crime.

    McCain's League would create for the U.S. President a standing organization for engaging in aggressive war against "rogue regimes" whether they are an immediate, potential - or imaginary - threat.

    The irony is that when McCain and Bush talk about the danger of "rogue regimes" operating outside international law and threatening other nations, that is exactly what their neocon theories have made the United States: a country that - along with a few allies - becomes a law onto itself.

    Similarly, McCain and Bush share the view that the President of the United States should embody and personify these new imperial powers. Just as the U.S. government can act in any way it sees fit under these neocon theories, its Commander in Chief also can do whatever he wants without legal constraints.

    That was spelled out by a top McCain adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, declaring in a letter to the right-wing National Review that McCain agreed with Bush's assertion that the President may override laws that he deems an impediment to fighting the "war on terror."

    Holtz-Eakin said McCain supports Bush's program of warrantless wiretaps despite the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and a 1978 law requiring the Executive to gain approval from a special court for intelligence-related wiretaps inside the United States.

    "Neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001," Holtz-Eakin wrote in describing McCain's position.

    Article II Powers

    Holtz-Eakin further cited Article II powers of the Constitution in explaining how McCain would act as President, suggesting that McCain - like Bush - would exercise virtually unlimited executive powers for the duration of the indefinite "war on terror."

    McCain also has announced that he would appoint Supreme Court justices like Samuel Alito and John Roberts who - along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas - represent four votes in favor of reinterpreting the Constitution to grant the President the broad powers claimed by Bush and McCain.

    If a President McCain gets to replace one of the five other justices with another Alito or Roberts, the new court majority could, in effect, rewrite the rules of the American Republic to declare the imperial presidency "constitutional."

    If that happens, the American people would no longer possess "unalienable rights," as promised by the Founders and enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The President would possess what the neocons call "plenary" - or total - power.

    That means the President would have the authority to arrest anyone as an "unlawful enemy combatant," deny the person the right to a lawyer or a trial by jury, and subject the individual to any treatment that the President sees fit, from indefinite imprisonment up to torture and death.

    This neocon vision also holds that the President - on his own authority - could take the nation to war anywhere in the world for whatever reason.

    In essence, the United States would cease to be a democratic Republic with citizens guaranteed fundamental liberties and with an Executive possessing limited authority constrained by the Legislature. All meaningful power would be invested in the President as a modern-day monarch.

    John McCain may criticize President Bush on the edges of neoconservative policies, such as failing to prosecute the Iraq War more aggressively, and he may differ with Bush on the efficacy of torture, given McCain's own mistreatment as a Vietnam prisoner of war.

    But there should be no doubt that a McCain victory would give the neocons another four-year lease on the White House. And, after those four years, there might be no feasible way back for the great American Republic.

    --------

    Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, "Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush," can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, "Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the

Church And/Or State --- Religion And/Or the Rule of Law

 

I think that the issue today for Catholics in America is Church or State, Religion or the Rule of Law. Not Church and State. Not Religion and the Rule of Law. But "or." That pesky word which separates bishops and archbishops and cardinals and surely the present pope and his predecessor from those of their colleagues who speak with "and." Or/ & And/High Priests.

Today,two extremely prominent Catholic lay persons, an Or/College Chaplain Priest, and an Or/High Priest won cherished publicity: www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.communion09jun09,0,7586458.story in The Baltimore Sun.

Don't Play Politics with Communion

By David O'Brien and Lisa Sowle Cahill

June 9, 2008

What do a former legal counsel for Ronald Reagan and a Democratic governor have in common? As you might expect, it's not the same politics. Douglas W. Kmiec, an esteemed constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University, is a pro-life Republican. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is a moderate known for consensus-building. But these prominent Catholics are both the most recent targets of clergy who use Communion as a political weapon and effectively blacklist respected Catholic leaders. It's time for Catholics and all Americans to speak out against this spiritual McCarthyism.

When Mr. Kmiec endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president, conservative Catholic blogs buzzed with outrage. How could a conservative known for his public opposition to abortion rights support a pro-choice liberal? In a recent Catholic Online column, Mr. Kmiec describes how he was declared "self-ex-communicated" by many fellow Catholics. He writes that at a recent Mass, an angry college chaplain denounced his "Obama heresy" from the pulpit and denied him Communion.

In Kansas City, Kan., Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann has ordered Ms. Sebelius, also an Obama supporter, not to receive Communion after she vetoed abortion legislation riddled with constitutional red flags. The bill in question made it easier for prosecutors to search private medical records, allowed family members to seek court orders to stop abortions and failed to include exceptions to save the life of the mother. Along with many public officials, Ms. Sebelius recognizes the profound moral gravity of abortion. She has supported prudent public policies that have reduced abortions in Kansas by investing in adoption services, prenatal health care and social safety nets for families. But in his diocesan newspaper, the archbishop blasted the governor over her "spiritually lethal" message and her obligation to recognize the "legitimate authority within the Church."

The archbishop has a right and indeed an obligation to speak out against abortion. But he is on dangerous ground telling a democratically elected official - accountable to federal laws and a diverse citizenry - how to govern when it comes to the particulars of specific legislation. The proper application of moral principles in a pluralistic society rarely allows for absolutes.

Using a holy sacrament to punish Catholics has troubling political implications during an election year. St. Louis Archbishop Raymond L. Burke warned Sen. John Kerry - a Catholic whose record reflects his faith's commitment to economic justice, universal health care and concern for the poor - not to receive Communion during the 2004 presidential race because of his support for abortion rights. In a New York Times interview just a month before the election, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver gave signals that Catholics who voted for a pro-choice candidate were cooperating in evil. Mr. Kerry narrowly lost the Catholic vote to President Bush.

Catholics make up a quarter of the American electorate and are swing voters in key battleground states that will play a decisive role in electing our next president. It's essential that these voters recognize Catholicism defies easy partisan labels and is not a single-issue faith.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops warns in an election-year guide that particular issues must not be misused as a way of ignoring "other serious threats to human life and dignity." These threats identified by the bishops include racism, the death penalty, war, torture, lack of health care and an unjust immigration policy. These broad Catholic values challenge Democrats and Republicans alike to put the common good before narrow partisan agendas.

If we remain silent when respected Catholic leaders are publicly attacked and denied Communion, the proper role of faith in our public square is grossly distorted. This election year, let's have a better debate about faith and political responsibility that reclaims the vital role religion has often played in renewing our most cherished democratic values.

+++++
David O'Brien, the Loyola professor of Catholic studies at the College of the Holy Cross, has written books about the history of American Catholicism. Lisa Sowle Cahill is a professor of theology at Boston College and a former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. This article is distributed by Religion News Service.

Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun

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The Or/High Priest might well have proclaimed:

"Choose! Me or the Governor  of the State of Kansas, whom I publicly condemn for her political maneuvering on abortion, and I order her not to receive Communion."

The Or/Chaplain might well have joined in:

"As priest of this parish I denounce our most honored conservative member, a law professor at Pepperdine, because he likes Obama, and Obama is pro choice. No communion for the evil professor."

These public condemnations are not Christ like, because Jesus' stern criticism was directed at high priests and not  at people-people. These Or/High Priests duck accountability, dodge Jesus himself, abandon the kingdom of his father, and condemn people-people for not giving them, them, them, obeisance and obedience. These few and powerful hierarchs claim  they speak with infallibility on moral issues like  abortion, and they want a Roman Catholic totalitarian government in which they and they alone are executive, legislative and judicial authority. The members of their parish or diocese must obey the pronouncements. Otherwise, no Communion for those who disagree, refuse to accept such authority.

A legal aphorism states that silence may be construed as consent.  And consent means acceptance. If we accept the high priest's "or," then either America must be overthrown or Roman Catholicism must be expunged from civilization. That is what "or" means.  "Give me liberty  or give me death." "My way or the highway." "Love me or I will kill you."

"And" means something else. It means being human together, with others, a community, receiving Communion though sinful, even a sinner,  no saint, with freedom of and from religion, to be Buddhist, Catholic, Evangelical, Protestant, Muslim,  Jew, Hindu, or none at all. It means being American, African, European, Asian, also. "And" includes; "or" excludes.

Now, because of the Kansas Governor and the Pepperdine Professor, I think  we Catholics in America have come to the point of no return. Be we left, middle or right, we must now stand and declare ourselves. We cannot  duck the issue of "and" versus "or" any longer, lest we drown in our own despicable cowardice and schizophrenia. We must declare ourselves now. Quietly. With conviction. Inspired or expired. Choose either - or.

So, choose:

1 -- High Priests who command and condemn.

2 -- Bishops who serve servants of God.

So, choose:

1 -- Knowing the ramifications, the consequences.
2 -- Do not choose blindly, without thought.

So, choose:

1 -- Roman Catholicism, old, very old and hanging in there, onto absolute power, using the New Testament only for quotes, commanding, condemning, excommunicating, denying the sacraments to the people of God.

2 -- Catholicism, whether old or new, and based on Jesus of the New Testament.

So, choose:

1 -- Remaining silent is not a choice.
2 -- Silent ones are unwilling to take sides, afraid to confront a bishop, be he a strong one who withholds Communion, or a weak one who urges us not to rock the boat.

So, choose:

1 -- If the Or/High Priests, then we choose treason eventually and have to overthrow American Democracy.
2 -- If the And/High Priests, we choose the abandonment of Roman Catholicism, which will vanish, consumed by its own lust for power, but we will save our country and our church, our Catholicism. Our God may save us. If our choice is correct.

So, choose:

1 -- The Or/High Priests do not want us to choose, nor to question, just to obey and, "Please, feel free to receive Our Lord in Communion." They do want us to keep the boat steady, don't rock it, obey.
2 -- The And/High Priests do not want us to choose either, because our questions are irksome and expose their hypocrisy in giving obeisance to the institution of Romanism and not to the Catholicism of us. They are more afraid than we are.

So, choose.

1 -- Which do we wish to follow.
2 -- If neither, then drop the charade, the masquerade, and admit that we believe and know there is not much of a church, not much of a country, both peopled with peasants bowed down before their lords.

So, choose:

1 -- Same. More of the same until we die and are judged.
2 -- Change. Renewal of country and church, as we live with integrity, die gratefully, and are judged by a merciful God.

So, choose:

Why do we let some bishops act the way they do, without accountability?

Why do we silently accept intolerance?

Why do we stay silent before injustice?

Why do we let them get away with it?

Why? Oh! God! Why?

Join CTA

The mail delivered an invitation from Call To Action, CTA,  to become a formal member. Strange, for I am not a joiner of acronymic groups. After a bold-faced "I've had enough!" the CTA flyer used just three phrases to describe the Church. They caught my attention, made me listen up, read on.

1. Intolerance.
   
2. Injustice.
   
3. Lack of accountability.
   

I would never belong willingly to any organization that so emblazoned its essence on all its members and commanded those three attributes as requisites for claiming to belong as a member. Of course not. Imagine what my response would be to this invitation: "Say! Hey! You. We're looking for some good and reliable men, practiced in and devoted to intolerance, injustice and lack of accountability. Come, join us and dominate the world."

I may be pig-headed, shallow, ignorant, but I am not intolerant, unjust, unaccountable. Never-the-less, how-some-ever, and-yet-and-yet, I used to fill in the form asking "Religious Preference?" with "Roman Catholic." That did a job on integrity, so much so, that I began to decline to answer, realizing that writing just "Catholic" is a cop-out blazing in shame. Then, I simply left that line blank. As blank as I was without a Church to call Church. I was flushed with anger at high priests who made the Church their own elite club, and confounded with shame for being a Catholic.

I am intolerant of the intolerant.

I seek justice. I chose to become a lawyer, shortly after leaving the Jesuits in 1957. That was my life's work until retirement in 2001.

I am accountable. In retirement, the two portions of my life became one, when the Jesuit years and the lawyer years merged, and I began to study the history and ecclesiology of the Church, in order to stand and speak and write truth to power. Both my Jesuit formation and legal training showed me with simple clarity that the issue for renewal of our Church is power and the abuse of power. From 2002 to date I have been writing on Religion and the Rule of Law, Church and State, the use and the abuse of Power. For that I am accountable.

CTA's invitation is timely. CTA looks more like Church than RCC, without claiming to be a new Church, because it is a part of the Church reaching out to those gasping in a dysfunctional Church. Family just doesn't walk away to found a new family. A friend had helped found Take Back Our Church, TBOC,  not too long ago, and I joined. Why not, I thought, link them?

Time to stop fretting in "conjectures of a guilty bystander." Time for integrity, as well as faith, hope and love. Time to be Catholic rather than talk about it, write about it. Time to be active, within a group dedicated to tolerance, justice and accountability.

Today, I join CTA. Its invitation and my response are proof that the Holy Spirit is breathing.

.

 

The Need for Greatness That Many of Us Harbor

When I look on the heroes in my life, what I see is their greatness. We fumble for words to say what it is that lifts them above us: talent, integrity, courage, decency, holiness, a whole bunch of synonyms for being a saint. I think Chip Brown stumbled on it in his article on Tiger Woods in today's New York Times. One word: Greatness.

Check out this week's Play Newsletter:
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2008/05/29/sports/playemail/index.html.  It says:

When Chip Brown went to Florida for two weeks in March for an up-close look at the Tiger Woods phenomenon, he left knowing that Woods, still just 32, was one of the most written-about athletes of all time, the subject of many millions of words, including some 85 books. He also knew Woods tended to avoid saying anything very revealing.

But Brown had been studying Egyptian gods for an article for "National Geographic," and he saw in Woods the same kind of alloy that, in ancient Egypt, reflected greatness back onto an entire civilization. In his cover story for the current issue of PLAY, "It's Good To Be Immortal," Brown chose to focus on the relationship between Tiger Woods and us, and how his greatness as an athletic performer fulfills a need for greatness that many of us harbor.

Scott McClellan may not have greatness, but he is speaking truth to power, about what he did and hated doing, as Press Secretary for The White House. He went along with it, anyway, and now speaks, only to be doomed. I may not follow, but listen to what he has to say.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson has greatness. He is on a speaking tour in the United States for his book Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus. He, too, speaks truth to power, and is damned. When Catholics hate Catholics, there is no decency, only damnation to hell's fire for eternity.  I listen to the Bishop and I follow him, for he is a Christ before the high priests of his own times. That is the "greatness that many of us harbor."

We can measure the impact of these two spokespersons by the quality of those who pounce, too late to silence them, but in time to  doom – State; or damn -- Church. Quickly, even immediately, they surge forth to pounce, on anyone who dares besmirch their institution. The State. The Church. They are not nice people.  They have no greatness.  They do not even harbor it.  Actually, they are little people, without greatness: the Libbys, the Cheneys, the Wolfowitzes, the Rumsfelds, the Bushes. No such litany is needed for churchmen. "High priests" will do.

Pouncers have few inklings to acknowledge heroes. They may long for greatness – as in a legacy -- but can never see it in others or in themselves, enwrapped as they are in brillo, rather than awe. Which brings the puzzlement: Why disgust? Rather than awe? Lots of disgust lately, but little awe. Scott McClellan and the bush Bush reaction to his disclosure and exposure. Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and the burning bush reaction from hierarchs who hate each other.

There is a common fugue in the daily flow and earthquakes of news: be it in print or on cable; from quakelake books flooding the market; instant condemnation uttered by puzzled pundits; spokespersons unmuzzled, lunging off leashes; and those knee-jerk rushers to judgment: Whom shall we doom or damn today?"

Makes little difference whether one claims allegiance to State rather than Church, as one well might, for those who pounce out of Church are the most practiced and best skilled at obliteration by destruction. Theirs leaves no spoor. At least the assassins from Church are consistent by condemning their prey to an eternity of hellfire and damnation with "He's a heretic." We don't hear, "He's not the Bishop Geoffrey we thought we knew."

In State's pursuit of those who done it wrong, the justification is the expansion of power, pretty much the same driving force for Church, but not clothed in vestments of religiosity. And so, the news of the moment is that McClellan is leaving the muzzlement of political spokesman, even as his former colleagues enter puzzlement at his behavior, "He's not the Scott we used to know."

Bishop Robinson, on the other hand, is not as slyly dismissed, you see, and must be destroyed, without trace. After all, he is simply asking questions, as he told ABC News, but he must be damned, with no understanding, no forgiveness, no salvation outside the Church, no puzzlement. Not even puzzlement, that snide reaction of Bush people to criticism of their president.

I often think of the truism: What Peter says about Paul  says far more about Peter than it does about Paul. 

I also often think of Plato and his Republic: Who shall guard the Guardians?  

And yesterday, I thought of two men whose birthday it is. My father, whose greatness was born in 1896. And Walker Percy, the novelist who was born in 1916. Percy wrote,

[We] live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

Listen then, to Scott McClellan's answers and those who are puzzled by him.

Listen to Bishop Geoffrey Robinson's questions and those who forbid him to ask.

Harbor greatness.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and Robert Blair Kaiser

We think of Ian Fleming as the creator of only James Bond. But he is a great writer and great writers see much more when they look out on our world, work on what they see with creativity, and enthrall the world thus seen with more than just one hero for our times. Fleming is such a great writer, not limited by that one genre for James Bond; there is the other one in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Wikipedia tells us that this book is a children's novel written by Fleming for Caspar, his son. At first, the car named Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is just a sports car, but as the book progresses, the car surprises the family by beginning to exhibit independent actions. After many intriguing adventures, Chitty and the family fly home to England, although Fleming hints that the car has yet more secrets. For more, read the book. Or, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitty_Chitty_Bang_Bang.

 Our Robert Blair Kaiser is another great writer, who broke free from the chains of just one genre, moving easily, skillfully, in the fields of ecclesiology , biography, fiction (more real than fact!) -- three books in a row:

• A Church In Search of Itself: Benedict XVI and the Battle for the Future
  
• Cardinal Mahony: A Novel
  
• "RFK Must Die!" Chasing the Mystery of the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination
  

Mahony and Benedict XVI are Church, and Kennedy is State, as in Church and State. Have you heard of Hillary's reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy? Check out Kaiser's most recent book, an Open Sesame, which unlocks closed doors, so we can see how the inside functions to obfuscate the outside. The way both Church and State can do.

 Kaiser's genius – his friends call him Kaiser -- is also shown in his founding an organization for Catholics to take back our Church from the clutching grip of the hierarchy before it becomes lost in cold, dead hands. He calls it Take Back Our Church. In the acronymic way of designating lay groups dedicated to reform and renewal, it became TBOC. You may pronounce that Tee Be Oh! See, in sort of a marching beat akin to "America the Beautiful"-- or Tee Bock, should you mean business in a no-nonsense sort of way and are tired of waiting for bishops to wake up. Run it altogether for the website at: http://www.takebackourchurch.org/

 It's kind of tough, if not disheartening, for a layman and his bunch of men and women, known as the Laity – a lousy word for The People of God – to get going and rebuild the glorious Catholic Church, now lying in ruins as the Roman Catholic Church, for the Pope and Curia have more or less stolen it. They kept it locked up in the cellar of the Vatican, by setting up a weird group of guys, all men, all celibate, self-perpetuating by natural selection, the careful kind fostered by all secret societies and cults, as a tight-knit, tiny-tiny bunch of bishops, who control the world. 4,500 or so of them have 1,200,000,000 lay people hopping up and down from full squats to deep kneels to tippy toe longings, by a simple snap of their fingers, the ringed ones holding big sticks that go THUMP! when bashed on the ground. Never stick a foot out when a bishop's going by, and run for cover should it be a cardinal. You can tell the difference by their colored gowns: purple for bishops; scarlet for the birds.

 TBOC could use a little help from a bishop or two, to give it some clout, if not a tad of respectability, which might entice more bishops in a row to toddle on over to the people's side of the Church and make meaningful that old advertising slogan of Church qua Church – Instauratio Omnia in Christo – Restore Everything in Christ. TBOC is about instauration, and a bishop could help.

 One showed up recently. Where? Not in America where most bishops are toadies, nor Europe where they appear to have given up and are holding on till retirement, but, of all places, Australia. And his name is Geoffrey Robinson, Bishop of Sydney, who retired in order to write Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church. He is currently on tour in America and is being joined by Robert Blair Kaiser, author of Cardinal Mahony: A Novel in which Roger is a good guy, but that's fiction and the fact is that he isn't. Rodger the Dodger has done the implausible in banning Bishop Robinson from appearing in Los Angeles. Can you believe that? A cardinal swats a bishop in public, before the whole world, as if saying, "This is my town, Buddy. No Aussies need apply. I don't like the way you wear your hat."

Ian Fleming and Robert Blair Kaiser had helped me realize that the stature of a writer stands not in one book, and Church can bear more than one adjectival description. I commune in a corrupt Church and hope for a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Church. Cardinals and Bishops are Ordinaries – possessors of absolute power, equals, immune from onslaughts by a co-equal hierarch. They can ban and bar dumpy, grumpy old men like me who are lay – Gawd! I hate that word, and "non-clerical" is worse – but no hierarch can outhierarch another hierarch. Not even the pope.

 What is going down – definitely not "on" – in the Roman version of the Catholic Church? A dying grasp on power before it slips from cold, dead hands? Hasn't Roger the Dodger read that magnificent book Kaiser wrote about what he could be, the book which turned the fact of his fiction into the kind of cardinal you'd like to have in for dinner, take to a ball game, call up on your cell phone and ask, "Hey Roj, what's up? Wanna go over and listen to Geoff? He's speaking tonight. The guy's got guts, like you in had in Kaiser's book."

Bishop Robinson's book is getting known. America, our favorite Jesuit periodical – used to be, that is, until Tom Reese got booted by a brand new pope who lives on resentments – had this to say, as quoted by Amazon.com:

"[T]he importance of Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church lies in the fact that a bishop, an ecclesiastical `insider,' has had the courage to challenge the institution of which he was a part and invite serious conversation regarding a broad range of church issues that have too often been declared off-limits by church leadership. If Robinson's book opens the door to more open and responsible theological conversation by members of church leadership regarding the unique demands facing our church today, it will have fulfilled its purpose."

Wonder whether Cardinal Mahony and Bishop Brown, a sycophantic dreamer who loves scarlet, look on Bishop Robinson as a Funny Food Fighter and themselves as Hefty Hostile Hierarchs . . . Ah! What a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Church we cherish.

 Bishops come and bishops go,

Clucking cardinals row by row,

Go! Tee Bock! to stop the flow,

Of that black line chained in tow.

 
 

"Banned In Boston" was one helluva marketing ploy to sell books and get people to go to movies. "Ban a Bishop" may be the best way TBOC, when the bishop banned is a Geoffrey from Owstrayleea. A bishop from Australia could be a Crocodile Dundee from the Outback and would take no crap from a kangaroo. What an image that is! Cardinal Mahony, the black-haired one, as a jumping 'roo. Fancy how his footwork, long practiced, is now an instinctive habit, keeping him safe from the darts and arrows of outrageous fortune in LA. Ah! Yes, but Geoffrey's on the way. Making the news. People are looking up. Maybe, maybe . . .

 Kaiser's the man of the people-people and Robinson's the bishop of the people-people. Mahony's just an ordinary, a typical ordinary Ordinary, a contrary contrarian. And now Kaiser has found the bishop he was hoping for, the first of many to follow. There are a lot of real bishops in our Church. They're just keeping their heads down while riding out the earthquake of John Paul that buried Vatican II and the shocks of the aftermath of Benedict XVI. As those abate, there is a stirring as people come up out of the ruins, looking around for help. Kaiser knows bishops all over our world. There are more than one who, like the Holy Roman Empire in 1519, are waiting for the Martin Luther of our times to fire them up and lead them on out. It won't be easy, but it will be good to restore all things in Christ by unpacking the Church. John Paul II had 28 years to pack it with his kind of bishop, the same way Franklin Delano Roosevelt dreamed of packing the United States Supreme Court. JPII got away with it. FDR got squelched. Bishop Robinson confronts. A few of the old guard try to stop him. But, . . .

 There are more Geoffrey Robinsons out there, waiting to jump in. TBOC! TBOC! TBOC!. If Tee Be Oh! Sea is a bit smarmy, patriotic like politicians like it, then go blunt and simple and Australian with Tee Bock.

 Two men of God: Robinson and Kaiser. Great writers. Read them.

• Kaiser makes Mahony a hero in fiction truer than fact. Read it, yet?
  
• Robinson's got courage in confronting a monolith. Read it, yet?
  
• Kaiser's the man out front in TBOC's website. Read it, yet?
  
• Kaiser just wrote "RFK Must Die!" Read it, yet?
  

Tolle, lege!

A Tornado In Colorado

So different looking at a tornado on TV and going out on our deck, here in the northwest corner of Longmont, Colorado, to see one live. It came out of the southwest yesterday, at 50 mph, heading on a path 5 miles away, which spared our apartment complex. It was heading northeast. The black cloud was enormous as it approached. It didn't look like a tornado, but was clearly a menace from edge to edge, wide, huge.

We think tornado as a thin, whirling spout from cloud to ground, reaching down to finger the earth. This monstrous one was a mile to a mile and a half in width, letting us know that we couldn't dodge and weave out of its path, should it come straight at us. And it was just, and always, down on the ground. A hungry, humongous cloud -- no pillar -- it squashed down on earth, until the area it enveloped and smothered was invisible. A big - black - dark cloud.

The immense girth of it was rotating slowly, not in the ferociously fast spinning of a twisting probe for whatever it could touch and obliterate, but a bulk of blob, swallowing, swallowing without a gulp, then spitting out its vomit. It passed on by, implacable, relentless, roaringly sure in its conviction that it could never be stopped, until it chose to stop. Invincible.

A twister on TV is thin in a spin, scooping  clean a dirty floor like a darting broom. Yesterday's tornado was the vacuum cleaner of the sky, its intake as wide as the mouth of a great river. It was as if Mother Weather had laid down her high-powered sniper's rifle of a twister, to wield the mushroom cloud of a nuclear weapon, or the pyroclastic flow of a volcano as big as our county.  We lost the sun.  As we craned our necks around to the northeast –our deck faces south -- the sun returned. The great black cloud was moving on to the north, down low, real low, on Windsor and Fort Collins, heading for Cheyenne.  

Kevin and I knew that its path could have been straight at us, rather than keeping a few miles away and slanting off to the northeast. Still, it was no noonday devil's show to gawk at. This was a tornado as big as the sky, and we were in it, not dead center, but off on a radius toward its outer circumference. We didn't have to flee and could stay there, near the outer edge of doom, while it came, bearhugged the land to our east, moved on quickly, relentlessly, consuming whatever was below. And then it was gone.

We knew we were safe as observers outside on the deck, but felt like guilty bystanders. Jean was deeper in it, though, closer to the center, driving the RAV4 on her way home from  3 miles away. We were stationery on the deck, but she was moving on and inside the great black cloud. Golf-ball hail, same size as ping-pong balls, but not as harmless, splattered the hood and roof of her car, as if thousands of AK-47s on full-automatic were spewing rounds of crackling whack after whack after whack. All she could see and hear was swirling, saturated black storm and other lost cars moaning and weaving and avoiding each other in the instinct to survive. She kept on heading for home, hands so tight on the steering wheel, she thought it would snap off before the hail bashed the car into putty. Hail and rain eased. Black lightened, lifted into an oozing  grey.

She found the entrance to our complex, and, parking below, she saw a neighbor's car passing by, dented severely from hail that must have been the size of of baseballs and just as hard. A new-car-sticker was still stuck in the left rear window, dealer plates of cardboard were ragged and ripped, and the pitiable car looked as if it were on the way to a junkyard to be crushed for scrap. So did its driver, who must have been out there closer to the center of the storm. As Jean came up the stairs, the sun was allowed to beam, and we began to return to the ordinary comfort and extraordinary adventure of another day on the High Plains, at the edge of the Rockies in Colorado.

Storms come and go. Great storms are embedded in remembery and linger on. The difference in the memories of those storms is that a hurricane terrifies and hangs on for hours, days, but a tornado terrifies and is gone before it comes.

17 years ago, on October 30, 1991, I was in a Nor'easter in Maine, made famous by Sebastian Junger in The Perfect Storm and the movie of the same name. When we visit Linda, Jean's friend in Gloucester, MA, we go out to eat in the restaurant, where the crew of the swordfish vessel Andrea Gail had their last meal ashore. Before that storm became so famous, it lodged deep in memory, because I was so scared. Our house was just 75 yards from the furious raging of the Atlantic Ocean. The building wracked, its picture window slammed by winds close to 70
mph, which threatened to smash it into fragments. Hoping to escape with our lives, I forced our family into the car and took off for the Hendrys, our in-laws in Freeport, Maine.

That drive was only 30 miles, but it took a long time to get there. My hands ached from the white-knuckled fear that comes from being the only car on the road fleeing for safety in a monster storm. A haunting image remains: a old man in a yellow slicker with a hood, hunkered on an older bicycle, pedaling his way through rain gushing over him like waves crashing down on a king crab fishing boat in Alaskan waters. The bike would slow down almost to a stop, teeter, wobble, then creep ahead, as the old man gave it all he could, from every muscle and fiber and bone and nerve in his body, all as determined as he to survive.

Yesterday's experience of the tornado was measured in minutes, maybe an hour or so, from seeing it way off in the south and watching it leave way off in the north. While it moved at 50 mph, it took a while to make its way from Boulder, through Niwot and head up to Fort Collins and Wyoming, about 60 miles. The Perfect Storm of 1991 lasted for hours, as if it liked us so much it wanted to stay for a couple of days. And did. 

Over 50 years ago, I was in a major typhoon in Tokyo, which almost crushed the University. That typhoon in 1955 drove Captain Jack to take his tanker out of Tokyo Bay and head for safety out in the Pacific Ocean. We compared memories one night, after a meeting in Portland, Maine in the 1970s, in one of those moods of reminiscence over stormy events in our lives. Then, there were the earthquakes. In class one day, I shivered in terror, while the students sat calmly and waited patiently for the walls to stop vibrating. In time, calmness came to me also. I was getting to be an old hand.

70 years ago, I sat in our dining room rigid with the stark horror that makes a 9 year old boy freeze, go mute, unable to holler, as the giant elm in our back yard fell towards the dining room window and crashed into our roof. Mom and Dad were rigid in shock. Aunt Anne jumped from her chair, screaming, and crashed to the floor as her false leg broke in two from fright of its own. Little brother Kevin had his back to the window and sat there, wondering why the rest of us were so frantic. That was the evening of September 21^st, when The Great Hurricane of 1938, "The Long Island Express", hit Boston. That was my first memory of storm and destruction. It took Dad and me a week to cut up the elm and repair the roof. Neighbors gave me 10 cents an hour to clean up busted, broken trees from their yards.

Remembering these storms awakens a much more conscious awareness of the disaster of Katrina and the shameful failure, persisting still, of our government to care for its people there. Remembery opens the mind to help it grasp the realization of the earthquakes in Myanmar and China in our here and now. One person died from yesterday's tornado. Hundreds of thousands were killed by typhoons and earthquakes in the Far East. In this month of May, there has been a near-record number of 47 tornados, which have killed close to a hundred people. Colorado is the most recent state to join the long list of states from the Plains to Eastern Georgia being clobbered by severe weather.

As guilty bystanders, we conjecture the toll of natural disasters, but cannot fathom nature's onslaught against our humankind. Without experiences of our own, deposited and locked in memory, we falter in compassion. Back in freshman English at B.C. in 1945, Father Paul McNulty, SJ, asked us what Newman meant in "The Second Spring" by using "realization" and "understanding" as if they were opposites in meaning. Our class fumbled with answers and opinions. Fr. McNulty ended the rambling discussion with, "I understand the meaning of the word 'death.' I realize it when my mother dies."

I understand the meaning of "storms" -- hurricanes, earthquakes, typhoons, tornados. I realize them by being in them in 1938, 1955, 1991, yesterday.

Response to Luke Timothy Johnson’s Review of Garry Wills’ Recent Books

The current issue of Commonweal gives us "What Wills Misunderstood," a review, at: http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=2237

Luke Timothy Johnson ends this review of Garry Wills' three books on what Jesus, Paul and the Gospels meant with this:

To write simply and truly about complex subjects - and the subjects of all three books are extraordinarily complex - one must know enough to cut through the complexity and isolate what is deepest and most important in the subject. In these three books, Wills simply did not know enough to do the job.

May I respectfully borrow such words?

To write a review simply and truly about Garry Wills' work on complex subjects - and the subjects of his three books are extraordinarily complex - one must know enough to cut through the complexity and isolate what is deepest and most important in the subject. In this review, Johnson simply did not know enough to do the job.

Unable myself to orbit in Johnson's outer space of exegesis, I'm not the first to treat him the way he treats Wills. Christopher West wrote a review of Luke Timothy Johnson's critique of Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body (TB) for the Catholic Education Resource Center, at http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0111.html. Eerily, Christopher wrote this about Luke Timothy:

The first thing I recognized in reading Johnson's article is that he simply hasn't penetrated the Pope's project. For anyone familiar with the content of the TB, Johnson's comments are like a slick stone skipping over the surface of a deep lake but never "sinking in."

Luke Timothy Johnson shows at times, a disturbing use of put-downs of others in similar disciplines, with supercilious downgrading of their well-earned reputations for scholarship. In Garry Wills' case, a lifetime of scholarship, which cannot be denigrated. Superciliousness is often tinged with jealousy, I think so. Maybe envy, perhaps?

Reading a Luke Timothy review – or his often peculiar insights into hermeneutics -- evokes a knee-jerk response to review his review in kind, but that would make me a Luke Timothy rather than an Emanuel Paul, a/k/a E. Paul, and I really don't know enough to put a Johnson down. He is a scholar. I'm just an old, retired lawyer, trying to learn how to write instead of spout. It's enough to remember the old saying: What Peter says about Paul says more about Peter than it does about Paul. In the case at hand, a Timothy and a Garry. The review sure does expose Luke Timothy Johnson, doesn't it? Wills comes out unscathed.

Disclosure, to unleash my antipathy, disguised Johnson-like in a "review" of a review. Like Wills, I'm a former Jesuit. Like him, I went on to another specialty, the law, and practiced how to do it for the next 40 years. Like him, I've been put down many times by those who "simply did not know enough to do the job." And I bounced right back up, laughing all the way at the silliness of a professional pouting like the lonely kid on the playground, who burns as a gifted classmate is installed as King of the Hill. The little boy in the fourth grade is father to the scholar, who claims he's good at explaining complex subjects, but the King is not.

I've read almost every book Garry Wills has written and thank him for helping to save my faith, love and hope for being a Catholic. I have read no books by Luke Timothy Johnson, but have seen articles and snippets of his sniping at others, and have no "Thanks" to say. Garry is my kind of gifted writers who simply do know enough to do the job. And with integrity.

One last pejorative and silly shot at Johnson? Unlike him, I don't use all three of my names, just plain, old, simple E. Paul Kelly, which, on reconsideration, does have a tinge of superciliousness to it, after all. We so like to set ourselves apart from the common herd by little touches of individuality.

The above is "What E. Paul Meant." Not much, I grant you, but it's mine. Simple, too. Not complex at all. Luke Timothy ticked me off the way Garry did him.