First Draft

How Life Began at Conception

Via Ntodd, here's a great piece of history: 

That year, Christianity Today — edited by Harold Lindsell, champion of “inerrancy” and author of The Battle for the Bible — published a special issue devoted to the topics of contraception and abortion. That issue included many articles that today would get their authors, editors — probably even their readers — fired from almost any evangelical institution. For example, one article by a professor from Dallas Theological Seminary criticized the Roman Catholic position on abortion as unbiblical. Jonathan Dudley quotes from the article in his book Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics. Keep in mind that this is from a conservative evangelical seminary professor, writing in Billy Graham’s magazine for editor Harold Lindsell:

God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: “If a man kills any human life he will be put to death” (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22-24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. … Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.

Christianity Today would not publish that article in 2012. They might not even let you write that in comments on their website. If you applied for a job in 2012 with Christianity Today or Dallas Theological Seminary and they found out that you had written something like that, ever, you would not be hired.

Quite frankly I think the debate over when life begins is a way to distract people from the fact that this entire debate is about the power of the state, and whether government should have the ability to force you to bear a child against your will. Not to mention prevent you from obtaining much-needed medical treatment in the guise of morality, should your pregnancy go terribly wrong in the way that pregnancies can. 

Nevertheless, it's fascinating to see the way the desire for power has shaped the public positions of evangelical Christians who claim their authority comes straight from God. Go read the whole thing. 

A. 

"Yes. This is Dog"

"You think dogs will not be in heaven?
I tell you, they will be there long before any of us."  

Robert Louis Stevenson

As skeptically humanist as I remain about heaven, I still want to believe that all dogs go there. And I believe it looks like this. Or maybe this.

There's a reason both the links above went viral this week. This is what joy looks like. Throw the ball!

War on the Modern World

Go for it. Just go for it. Burn it all down. Pile everything you've ever said was important to you in the street, douse it in gasoline, and let the blaze light up the sky. 

This puts it all on the table. Republicans and Catholics and Republican Catholics and Republicans who just say they're Catholic and Catholics who are Republican because abortion seems yucky are now all just going to have to say it now. 

They would rather lots and lots of women die from preventable conditions, too many unwanted children, and abortions that should never have to happen, than that they have to put up with the thought that some woman somewhere is making her own decisions regarding who she has sex with and when. 

I got news for a lot of people what think this is some kind of winning argument about religious freedom for Catholics. Catholic women have memories of the battle over the Pill and the issuance of Humanae Vitae the first time around.

For instance, the Belgian bishops stated: "Someone, however, who is competent in the matter under consideration and capable of forming a personal and well-founded judgment--which necessarily presupposes a sufficient amount of knowledge--may, after a serious examination before God, come to other conclusions on certain points. In such a case he has the right to follow his conviction provided that he remains sincerely disposed to continue his inquiry." Of those who arrived at conclusions differ­ent from Humanae Vitae, the Scandinavian bishops stat­ed: "No one should, therefore, on account of such diverg­ing opinions alone, be regarded as an inferior Catholic." The Canadian bishops made a similar statement: ’These Catholics should not be considered, or consider them­selves, shut off from the body of the faithful."

Catholic women remember the woman in the pew next to them in church, dragging 13 children behind her, her husband dead or gone and no help at hand. They remember the neighbor who died in childbirth because her doctor was bound by faith to save her baby at all costs. They remember the relative whose husband defied the hospital's orders to make sure there were no more children, who suffered horribly before the end. They remember their own miscarriages, stillbirths, when God wanted them to have just one more baby, at the age of 45 in 1953.

And those were the married women who wanted the children they had. Those were the ones doing it right, in the eyes of the more conservative bishops and members of the church. That was the fate due the good girls. I don't need to go over what happened to the bad ones, and what we remember about them. 

So go ahead, tell those women that a condom is cause for excommunication. Tell those women that the greatest threat to their liberty is some other lady in their health plan getting the pill for free. Tell those women, who lost their sisters, who lost their aunts, who lost their mothers, who saw the women around them worn out and rubbed down to nothing, that they don't have the right to painlessly, reasonably ensure that they live to care for the family they want. Let's have that fight. Let's haul out all the arguments. 

Let's talk about how God really wants our infant mortality rate to skyrocket. Let's talk about how many women, exactly, God wants dead. Let's make adherence to a rule of the modern world the be-all and end-all test of who is a true believer. That's never gone horribly wrong before. 

Let's have that fight, because there's no way it goes the way the bishops think it's going to go. This is the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, writing in 1968: 

In view of the American tradition of freedom and pluralism, it would be a serious mistake to use the encyclical as a kind of Catholic loyalty test. Nothing could so quickly snuff out the spirit of per­sonal responsibility, which has done so much to invigorate American Catholicism in the past few years.

Nothing could be more discouraging to young people and intellectuals, upon whom the future of our Church so greatly depends. Nothing could be more destructive of the necessary autonomy of Catholic universities and journals, which have begun to prosper so well. Nothing, finally, could be more harmful to the mutual relations of trust and cordiality that have recently been established between bishops and theologians.

He could have been speaking directly to the bishops and their power-hungry enablers in Congress today. Have that fight. Go ahead. You won't like the outcome. I've been saying for years that our vicious abortion politics are burning down everything else the Church has ever considered important, and this? This is like throwing a bottle of lighter fluid onto the kindling before striking the match. 

A. 

Religion Is Poison

It comes in Christian and Buddhist and Animist and.....

When I was talking to a friend this weekend about the same stuff I put in yesterday's post, she mentioned that his Mormonism also put people off.  I said, sure it does for the crazy fundamentalists who think that Jesus rode to work on a dinosaur, but most people don't really care about that; his Daddy Warbucks/sea snake mash-up is much more of a problem.

So then she started talking about just how crazy Mormonism is.  Which, don't get me wrong--it's nuts.  But I don't see it as any crazier than any other religion.  Some years ago, I decided that if your explanation for things requires any magic or supernatural intervention, it has passed a crazy event horizon; past that, all explanations are equally nutty.  One you've invoked a non-testable, non-natural cause, off you go.  And every single religion does that. 

Here's the beauty of this way of thinking: I no longer have to spend time categorizing which religions are crazier than the others.  Wicca?  Mormonism?  Islam?  All the same.  They're exactly the same, because they're all past the event horizon.  So instead of having to talk about how the revelations of the angel Moroni or whatever are WAY nuttier than the idea that a zombie Judean carpenter will grant you an eternal yet incorporeal existence, I can spend time oh, I don't know, writing smart-ass things for the Internet.

As noted, I say that religion is poison.  I don't just mean because of all the wars and intolerance; we can find other excuses to engage in those very human behaviors.  It's poison because it is a barrier to understanding why and how things work; when you don't know why something happens the way it does, you can just throw up your hands and say God/the spirits of our ancestors/Xtapolapocetl did it.  Worse yet are the people who do that god-of-the-gaps bullshit--when they come across a phenomenon that we don't have a good explanation for, they use that as evidence that their particular delusion must be responsible for it.  They're never heard apologizing for getting it wrong when we do come up with an explanation for the phenomenon in question.

I know that some people will tell me that religions can motivate people to do good things, or that there are beautiful stories to be found there; you could say the same about Aesop's fables.  And that also leaves you open to the fact that people can do terrible things and tell horrific stories thanks to religion.  And no amount of good works or stories can, in my mind, make up for the existence of Pat Robertson.

So that's my take.  You may commence bitching about me/it, condemning my non-existent soul, attempting to explain how your beyond-the-event-horizon idea is different, and/or whatever else in the comments. 

Ross Douthat: Love is a Bowl of Sugar

OH GOD IT'S NOT LIKE THAT YOU CLOWNASS: 

Many conservatives would go this far with Frank: Government is one way we choose to work together, and there are certain things we need to do collectively that only government can do.

But there are trade-offs as well, which liberal communitarians don’t always like to acknowledge. When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good. Unlike most communal organizations, the government has coercive power — the power to regulate, to mandate and to tax. These advantages make it all too easy for the state to gradually crowd out its rivals. The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.

I've noticed that we have no more private contractors, because we have an army. Before 1776, life was paradise for Blackwater but the minute we formed militias, they were fucked. Such a sad state for a glorious private enterprise. 

Sometimes this crowding out happens gradually, subtly, indirectly. Every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that can’t go to charities and churches.

Or to Applebees. Won't the government think of the jalapeno poppers? 

This is another "reasonable conservative" tic I've noticed from acquaintances of late: "I, personally, would give more money to charity or hire more people at my office if I paid less in taxes and various fees." And yes, you, nice person that I know, probably would. Ross might actually give more to charity if he had that money laying around. Does that mean we should give EVERY rich person free money on the off chance one or two of them might kick in $25 to the local food pantry? 

How is that any less governmental social engineering? 

Every program the government runs, from education to health care to the welfare office, can easily become a kind of taxpayer-backed monopoly.

There is distinct lack of soup kitchens and food pantries, now we have a welare office. What a fucking idiot. 

But sometimes the state goes further. Not content with crowding out alternative forms of common effort, it presents its rivals an impossible choice: Play by our rules, even if it means violating the moral ideals that inspired your efforts in the first place, or get out of the community-building business entirely.

This is exactly the choice that the White House has decided to offer a host of religious institutions — hospitals, schools and charities — in the era of Obamacare. The new health care law requires that all employer-provided insurance plans cover contraception, sterilization and the morning-after (or week-after) pill known as ella, which can work as an abortifacient. 

A) No, it doesn't. 

B) This does not, actually, violate the consciences of anybody, and here's why: Hospitals and insurers only have to COVER contraception, and only if they employ large numbers of non-Catholic employees. Nobody who is Catholic has to take it. Therefore, we should be counting on the large numbers of Catholics who are so serious about this shit that they won't take the pill to stand up for their own morals and against the horror that is Obamacare. 

I'll give you a minute to stop laughing. 

Ponder that for a moment. In effect, the Department of Health and Human Services is telling religious groups that if they don’t want to pay for practices they consider immoral, they should stick to serving their own co-religionists rather than the wider public. Sectarian self-segregation is O.K., but good Samaritanism is not.

Yes. Catholic hospitals are just in this for the decency of serving others. I'm not saying some of them weren't, in the beginning, but you can't pretend that a lot of this isn't profit-driven, and a lot of that profit isn't helped by massive tax exemptions. 

The rule suggests a preposterous scenario in which a Catholic hospital avoids paying for sterilizations and the morning-after pill by closing its doors to atheists and Muslims, and hanging out a sign saying “no Protestants need apply.”

Actually, that is exactly what Catholics leaders are saying by choosing not to follow the law. You know, this is a thing I keep hearing from Catholic officials in other contexts, this constant talk about church canon law, as if that should supersede actual real-life American law. I'm pleased as punch we all have our own ways of doing things and our own rules, but when you get right down to it, if you want to be a member of a community, you have to do more than just loudly demand that the entire community "respect" your beliefs by changing its morality to suit yours. 

The larger point Ross is making is actually more offensive, though: We can either have government or charity but not both. Our government cannot pursue any common good, because that will mean that everybody will assume shit is all handled and we can go back to watching the Super Bowl. If someone else has it taken care of, then I don't need to give a shit.

I don't know if Ross has met any of his fellow humans, but we're actually not like that. I post a lot of stuff about how stupid and selfish and mean we can be, but I believe people are basically decent and that given half a chance we will help one another. Given half a chance and a bit of encouragement, we will feed the stranger and clothe the naked and take care of the grandma whose car broke down on the freeway. I know this because I've seen it happen at least as often as I've seen people be awful, and I choose to believe that love isn't a bowl of sugar. There isn't only so much. If our government takes care of many of us, we will still take care of each other, because that's what we do. It's in our bones and blood, and hundreds of years of inhuman cruelty haven't beaten it out of us, not entirely. 

Decent government that acts in our interests doesn't kill the charitable impulse. It encourages it. It offers official approval of the nagging feeling in the pits of our stomachs that says, "somebody should be helping these people." It represents, outwardly, the best of us, and the only reason Ross or anybody like him has a problem with that concept is they don't want to be forced to give a shit about anybody but themselves. 

And that's fine, really. There are nice libertarian islands being built for people like that. 

Schmuck. 

A. 

Local Church Acts Reasonably; Church Hierarchy, Not So Much

Oh, sit DOWN like you supposed to: 

CHICAGO — On the heels of an agreement about parade times reached between Chicago LGBT Pride organizers and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel church — which sits on the June parade route — the Windy City’s Cardinal Francis George compared the event to “something like the Ku Klux Klan.”

“You don’t want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism,” the Cardinal told Fox News Chicago on Sunday.

When FOX tells you to chill out with the inappropriate and inflammatory rhetoric, you might want to consider heeding their advice, but no: 

“That’s a little strong analogy, isn’t it? Ku Klux Klan?” the Fox reporter said to the Cardinal in response.

“It is, but you take a look at the rhetoric,” he responded. “The rhetoric of the Ku Klux Klan, the rhetoric of some of the gay liberation people. Who is the enemy? Who is the enemy? The Catholic Church.”

The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend, pal. The fact that the parish in question was just fine with the parade (just not with the timing, which would have snarled the hell out of traffic, so parish leaders acted like grownups and reached an actual solution) makes it all the more ridiculous that His Eminence went out of his way to fall on his keys, in a public-relations sense.   

A. 

 

Happy Hanukkah!

A.

A Secular Nation

Newt, Newt, Newt: 

The quote came from Newt Gingrich, who condemned the very idea of a secular state. “A country that has been now since 1963 relentlessly in the courts driving God out of public life shouldn’t be surprised at all the problems we have,” the thrice-married, serial adulterer said. “Because we’ve in fact attempted to create a secular country, which I think is frankly a nightmare.”

Several things. First of all, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually miss Bob Dole. I miss the intelligent, high-minded Republican campaigning of the FREAKING 1990s, is how crazy this shitfest has become. They are just these total clowns, and I know I should take them more seriously, because lots of people will vote for anyone who isn't Obama, but they're so content-free these days that it's easier to just sit back and watch. The craziest thing as was said yesterday, somebody will say something crazier tomorrow. 

Second, when blithering on about how the government needs to get back into the God business, I wonder if these dinks consider that plenty of people IN the God business don't want their state or federal government anywhere near them or their assets. You think your church telling you how to run your government is scary? That scenario has nothing on your government telling you how to run your church, and all those big-money megachurch pastors might not like it so much when guys in suits are crawling all over their donation boxes. 

Third, oh for fuck's sake, shut up, Newt. A secular state is reason your creepy ass could get married three times, as a state truly run by Biblical principles would of course outlaw divorce. And probably stone you for your poly-blend sport coat, too. And the most of us have been led by Republican presidents since 1963, so who appointed all those judges who are now hating on God, anyway? Just shut up, and go buy yourself something pretty from Tiffany's. I know that always clears my head. 

A. 

Tim Tebow Doesn't Want You to Leave Tim Tebow Alone

Not only can he take it, he wants to take it:

I'll go a step further and say that, in so doing, Tebow knows full well that he is opening himself up to satire, because that is also a part of the deal evangelicals make when they dedicate themselves to converting a skeptical public. That's why, when Clay Travis famously asked in a press conference if Tebow was a virgin and caused so many sportswriters to flutter their lace hankies, Tebow simply smiled and answered the question. He wants people to ask that question. He wants every opportunity to talk about his beliefs in public, and he is smart enough to know that he will often rile folks in the process. Bruce Arthur and Jemele Hill and the Very Serious Media People are throwing a sneeze-guard around Tebow's religion that Tebow never would've asked for in the first place.

As usual, the problem is not with the thing, it is with the fan club. As with the Beatles, Jesus and Bill Maher, Tim Tebow could never hope to approach the level of offensiveness that his fans achieve on his behalf. Being defended is, in some ways, worse than being attacked, because your attackers at least give you the credit of assuming you are on their level.

Your defenders want you to be smaller, and in need of their protection. So that they can be bigger.

A.

Fuck Yeah, Church of England!

How often do  I say that around here?

The canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, the Rev Dr Giles Fraser, has resigned in protest at plans to forcibly remove protesters from its steps, saying he could not support the possibility of "violence in the name of the church".

Speculation grew in the last 24 hours that Fraser, a leading leftwing voice in the Church of England, would resign because he could not sanction the use of police or bailiffs against the hundreds of activists who have set up camp in the grounds of the cathedral in the past fortnight.

Just after 9am on Thursday, Fraser tweeted: "It is with great regret and sadness that I have handed in my notice at St Paul's Cathedral."

In a statement to the Guardian, Fraser, who was appointed canon in May 2009, confirmed his resignation, saying: "I resigned because I believe that the chapter has set on a course of action that could mean there will be violence in the name of the church."

[snip]

Fraser quickly became a hero figure among the Occupy the London Stock Exchange (LSX) movement, clearing police officers off the steps of St Paul's and supporting the group's right to peaceful protest after a court injunction stopped it from setting up camp in nearby Paternoster Square. He also delivered a Sunday sermon decrying corporate greed, which was seen as another sign of his endorsement of the protest.

Occupy London said it was "deeply moved" to hear of his resignation.

"He is man of great personal integrity and our thoughts are with him. He respected our right to protest and defended it. For that we are very grateful, as he ensured that St Paul's could be a sanctuary for us and that no violence could take place against peaceful protesters with a legitimate cause - challenging and tackling social and economic injustice in London, the UK and beyond."

The Catholic Church I attend when I drag my lazy ass out of bed on Sunday spends a lot of time gathering donations for the local food pantry, running benefits for the homeless, and generally working in the neighborhood around it, which isn't the richest in the whole world.

It's why I kept going after I felt I'd done my best to do the whole "believe in God" thing and was only ever going to get partway there. I kept going there because it wasn't just "try not to be such a douche all the time," though those sermons are useful to me. I kept going because I felt like that was the kind of place the church, and organized religion generally, needed more of: not a word about how women are whores merrily having abortions all the time, and lots and lots of actions about feeding some damn poor people already. 

Somewhere along the line we got the blasphemous idea that the only moral issues the church could take a stand on had to do with sex. As if there was any damage we could do by banging each other that would begin to approach the level of damage we do walking around every day in a world where some of us have more than enough to eat and some of us don't and that's somehow okay.

Kudos to Rev. Fraser for making a moral stand.

A.

This Doesn't WORK, France

Of course it's also bigoted and goes against all principles of free speech and equality, too:

MUSLIMS will be banned from praying outdoors in France from today in the latest move by officials to remove Islam from the public sphere.

The ban, announced by the government yesterday, infuriated French Muslim leaders, one of whom accused President Sarkozy's government of treating them like cattle.

They say that Muslims, who pray outdoors only because of a lack of space in mosques in France, feel stigmatised.

But Claude Gueant, the Interior Minister, said that the sight of hundreds of people gathering in the streets of Paris and other cities for Friday prayers was "shocking".

It comes after laws to prohibit pupils from wearing headscarves in schools and women from wearing the niqab, the full Muslim veil, in public.

Mr Gueant described outlawing street prayers as the latest brick in the wall that is shoring up the secular nature of the French state. He said that he had nothing against Islam, but wanted it out of the public eye.

Yes. Because nothing says "I like Islam fine!" like making sure you never have to see anyone practicing it.

For fuck's sake. In the history of the world, has persecuting the religious ever actually stopped people from adhering to that religion? If anything, oppression only empowers religious leaders to make the case that their cause is just, because if it wasn't so righteous, evil men wouldn't be trying to stop it. For like ten thousand years this has been true. I'm not asking that everybody know everything all the time, but some basic human psychology would be useful if you're going to make your living in politics.

A.

Yes. Jesus Needed MOAR PEEN.

Or something:

The macho Jesus movement has been bolstered by books like No More Mr Christian Nice Guy and The Church Impotent – the Feminisation of Christianity. But it's artist Stephen Sawyer, whose paintings of the Son of God as a tattooed biker and boxer have captured the imagination of Christian men searching for a more manly role model.

As Kentucky-based Sawyer, 58, points out: "I scarcely think Jesus could have overturned the tables of the money-lenders and driven them from the temple if he was a wimp. The model I use for my paintings is a surfer guy who's built like a brick shithouse."

But while you might expect this thinking to flourish in the American South, it's probably more surprising that it's gaining ground in the UK.

According to recent polls, the ratio of women to men worshippers in this country is 65% to 35% – and too much girliness is getting the blame for the gender imbalance.

As to the book titles, can someone please explain the difference between "feminine" and "impotent" to that fuckstick?

As to our painter friend, I think the best illustration of Jesus not being a wimp isn't surfing or boxing or riding a motorcycle but GETTING NAILED TO A TREE AND BEING OKAY WITH IT. Forget turning over the tables of the moneylenders in the temple, you want badassery, try getting railroad spikes driven through your palms. Jean Claude Van God Damme.

As to the entire concept, which is gross: I think if you want to attract straight men on Sundays, you don't recast him as a buff biker. You put his head on a Playboy bunny's body, am I right fellas?

What a load of nonsense. I hate this crap for the same reason I used to hate Guitar Jesus Living is Easy Mass in high school, where they acted like all that was holding teengers back from Christianity was the desire to sit on cushions in a circle instead of pews in a row. This is just an argument about the trappings, not the substance, and if the trappings are what's holding you back go find yourself a genuine theological crisis because we all have better things to do.

A.

Ewww

Joel Osteen got cooties all over my city.

*crosses fingers*

Hey, anybody who preaches what he preaches deserves a response on exactly this level.

A.

LeBron and Me

(Got a "hall pass" from A to post as long as it was before midnight. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. -- Doc)

One year ago, I took advantage of an off-day “hall pass” to complain about “The Decision” and the loss of LeBron James from my beloved Cavaliers.

I then spent every second of my basketball watching hoping that he would hurt as much as I hurt.

Every Miami loss was a celebration, every bad game, a triumph.

As the playoffs began, I found myself watching game after game, hoping that the Heat would get bumped off.

Each game they won, I wondered if there really was such a thing as karma.

I started getting very emo.

“If there is a God, how can he let this group of mercenaries and self-centered assholes win?”

“If life is fair, how can this be happening?”

“If I have to say, ‘NBA Champion LeBron James,’ I might start Betsy up in the garage, close the garage door and turn on a Cure album.”

Tonight, I realized that it had to be this way for karma to fully bloom.

For James to hurt as much as I did, several things had to happen:

• He had to be teased.
• He had to get as close as possible, only to have the diamond snatched away from him.
• He had to be crushed under the weight of his own ego.
• He had to lose in the worst way.

Mission accomplished.

He lost, not in the first or second or third round, but in the finals. He got there, got close and got kicked in the balls.

He lost to a team led by a guy who never asked out of town, never threatened to leave and never went on TV talking about himself in the third person.

Dirk Nowitzki said in an ESPN interview that when he was available as a free agent, not a single team called him. It wasn’t due to their lack of interest or his lack of talent.

They knew he was staying in Dallas. Why bother?

Loyalty.

A word that tested Dirk when owner Mark Cuban let his running partner and point guard of the gods, Steve Nash, bolt for Phoenix.

A word that angered Dirk when media pundits argued he’d need to leave the Metroplex if he were to ever win a title.

A word Dirk saw every day at practice, as it was tattooed down the left arm of Shawn Marion.

Marion, one of the pieces that Cuban quietly brought to Big D in an attempt to give Nowitzki one more run at a title, was no longer the Matrix.

He was more name than game.

The same could be said for the other broken toys that Cuban added.

Jason Kidd, the same point guard that was sent from Dallas to the Phoenix Suns in 1996 for Michael Finley, A.C. Green and Sam Cassell.

Tyson Chandler, a former first-round pick of the Bulls who never lived up to expectations.

J.J. Barea, an undrafted 5-foot-9 point guard who was best known for dating Miss Universe 2006.

Brian Cardinal, Brendan Haywood, Ian Mahinmi, DeShawn Stevenson, Corey Brewer and more. All guys who were bit players, castoffs or otherwise damaged.

All of these guys played meaningful minutes in a finals series built for crunch time.

Three of the six games came down to the final shot.

In none of those games was it James who delivered.

----

 The thing that kept playing in my head all night, as the clock wound down and the Mavericks’ lead grew to an insurmountable level was the opening scene of “Miracle.” When the Olympic hockey committee is yammering about how the Russians beat their guys, the NHL, the All-Stars, a clearly perturbed Herb Brooks makes the passing remark, “It wasn’t because you weren’t good enough.”

When the men cast an incredulous stare upon him, Brooks elaborates with, “All-Star teams fail because they rely solely on the individuals talent.”

That was the Miami Heat: An insanely talented group of individuals.

Not a team.

A team knows where it’s going when the chips are down. In two of the finals games, it was Nowitzki making the final plays, calling for the final shots and making the crucial decisions.

A team knows how to step up. When Nowitzki started off Game 6 with 1-for-12 slide, Jason Terry and DeShawn Stevenson stepped up, drilling shot after shot, holding off the Heat until reinforcements arrived.

A team knows to have faith in each member of that team. When Haywood couldn’t go and Chandler got into foul trouble, Mahinmi and Cardinal played gut-check minutes, despite lacking the Heat’s star power or talent level.

A team wins, because it’s greater than the sum of its parts.

That was always Brooks’ message.

It’s one I doubt the Heat won’t get tonight.

It’s something James will never understand.

---

A river of schadenfreude is likely flowing freely through the streets of Cleveland tonight. Sure, we didn’t win the NBA title, but neither did the man who quit on us and then pissed on us and then tried to pretend like we should all get on with our lives.

He walked down an empty hallway to a locker room that was devoid of championship goods. No special hats, no T-shirts, no champagne.

Tomorrow, thousands of kids in Nairobi, or wherever we send the losing merchandise, will likely be donning “A Ring for the King” T-shirts that were supposed to be flying off the shelves in Miami this week.

Tomorrow, he can read the clever headlines, the pundit columns and the general bile directed at him.

Tomorrow, I’ll get up and he’ll get up and we’ll be exactly the same.

Two guys without an NBA title.

Only this time, he’ll be hurting.

And I won’t be.

Malakas Of The Week: The U.S. Conference Of Catholic Bishops

It's institutional malakatude time again here at First Draft. The Catholic Bishops have issued their long awaited report on pervy pedophile priests. Do they blame celibacy? Hell, no. They blame hippies like Wavy Gravy and Woodstock, man.

The report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s.

Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found, and the problem grew worse when the church’s hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims.

The “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI after it erupted in Europe in 2010.

Hmm, I wonder what kind of weed the authors of the report were smoking: I want some, man.

This is a ridiculous conclusion that lets the Bishopric (apt image, no?) off the hook. My theory is that celibacy and sexual repression were the primary causes. Imagine a very religious young man who finds himself turned on by other men; something that is verboten under Catholic doctrine. He struggles against his desires and realizes that there's no better place to repress sexual longings than the priesthood. Some of those young men had genuinely perverse desires to repress but not according to the lawyers who wrote the report:

In one of the most counterintuitive findings, the report says that fewer than 5 percent of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia, which it defines as a “psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges and behaviors about prepubescent children.

“Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests,’ ” the report says.

That finding is likely to prove controversial, in part because the report employs a definition of “prepubescent” children as those age 10 and under. Using this cutoff, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests’ victims were prepubescent.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies a prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. If the John Jay researchers had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers’ victims would have been considered prepubescent.

This is not a "report" it is an argument on behalf of the Bishops. That's right, the same men who either stuck their heads in the sand, looked the other way or actively covered up for pervy padres. The Bishops continue to allow their need to defend themselves from litigation to overwhelm their pastoral duties to their parishioners.

The only positive thing I can say about the "report" is that at least it doesn't blame same-sexuality, which some members of the Catholic clergy and laity are prone to do. The whole thing reeks of malakatude of the most odious kind.

I'm not Catholic but my wife is and we live in a very Catholic city. Dr. A stopped going to mass because she got tired of being hectored by Opus Dei-style right wing priests on hot button social issues like abortion instead of hearing about social justice and protecting the weakest members of society such as children. Of course, our former Archbishop Alfred Hughes helped run the pervy priests cover-up for Cardinal Law in Boston so what else could we expect?

Finally, back to the preposterous imagery that this report planted in my brain: blame it on Woodstock. If that's the case perhaps the Bishops need a new logo: something along the lines of the keep on truckin' guy in a cassock holding a lighter whose flame forms a cross with the Woodstock logo in the background. That would be silly but no sillier than this report's passing the buck from the Church to hippies and free love. Bollocks.

It's time for the Bishops to face the music instead dancing around the truth:

 

 

 

'Here In This Country, At Least'

In which ABC News contrasts Stephen Hawking's comment that physical, Biblical heaven is horseshit with a 12-year-old who claims to have seen Jesus and "two of the Apostles" while undergoing emergency surgery at the age of four.

The segment begins at about minute 17 here.

Now, I don't want to bag on this kid, who after all is a kid, even if his pastor father has written a book alleging the family's miscarried child waits for them in the actual scriptural heaven. Believers of all kinds abound and generally they don't bother me very much, because being bothered by them would take away time I need to devote to playing Scrabble and watching The Good Wife and laughing at Bucky when he runs into things. 

I also, quite honestly, find the entire debate over what kind of afterlife there is and what it looks like and what you have to do to get into or out of what is usually characterized as the cosmic cool kids' club to be an utter distraction. If the whole point Jesus was trying to make is that systems and rules run a distant second to helping actual alive people in need in front of you, spending days on end wanking on about if there are 72 virgins or pearly gates or I can't get in if I cuss too much is unconscionable and ridiculous. Your treasure is in heaven? That's completely stupid. It can't be used to feed any poor people up there.

I do want to talk about ABC News' decision to cast the physicist and the pastor's son as if they were equals claiming precisely opposite things. Hawking isn't saying this kid didn't see what he thinks he saw, and also this kid is 12, and this is dumb anti-intellectual nonsense. But the reporter, Brian Harris, really outdoes himself in his little coda to this unbearably faux-folksy waste of oxygen.

"Stephen Hawking may have written more books and have many more advanced degrees than young Colton, but here in this country, at least, it's more than likely that the winner of the debate would be the 12-year-old."

WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? Here in this country, unlike in godless Europe or wherever that strange moon-man Stephen Hawking is from, we know that heaven is real? Here in this country, we like our physicists to debate seventh graders on a moron news show? Here in this country, we don't hold with no homosexual free-thinking sciency stuff? Here in this country, we're fucking idiots, and boy do we love God?

It's not that I would disagree with Harris, exactly. I mean, plenty of people do seem to love a version of God that is literal and materialistic and kind of dumb all around, who wants his followers to hate women and gays and poor people, who only cares if you have a little metal fish on your car. I think that's pretty much borne out in every voting pattern of the last 40 years. But that's not something that should be expressed with the kind of smug, chirpy joy Harris seems to be feeling here. If we truly would side with the 12-year-old, that's not, you know, an actual achievement. Nobody should be getting a cookie.

The other thing that makes me nuts about shit like this is it's not exactly a compliment to believers, either. It casts all those who do believe in heaven as stupid hick-ass 'necks who don't want to think about stuff any harder than some kid waking up from a weird anasthesia reaction. That's not really the way you want your side to look in this, or any, fight.

Thanks to CM on Facebook, who sent me in search of this idiocy.

A.

They'll Do Anything to Avoid Giving Obama Credit

Now John Paul II killed bin Laden:

A US military mission that cornered and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan was nothing short of a miracle, said Peru's President Alan Garcia, who attributed the divine intervention to newly beatified pontiff John Paul II.

"His first miracle has been to rid the world of this incarnation of evil, this demon of hatred and criminality," the Peruvian leader said, referring to the Al-Qaeda leader.

The late John Paul II showed uncanny timing, with his miracle falling on the very same day as a Rome ceremony beatifying him.

You know what this reminds me of, right?

A.

Is Our Catholics Learning?

Apparently Facebook is making all Catholic children into little sexy heathens:

"Facebook and other social media violate a person's privacy as it encourages young people a message to 'Publicize yourself!' The problem with this is that one's pictures, actions, and thoughts are shared instantly, globally and permanently," says the bulletin. "This is exactly the opposite of the Christian culture where people go into the secrecy and sacredness of the confessional to blot out their sins forever."

The bulletin lists four dangers associated with social network sites — dishonesty, predators, wasting time, and denying reality.

Emphasis mine, because I think a larger problem is Catholic parish bulletins encouraging young people a message to fucking write incorrectly. I get that not everybody proofreads everything for AP style, but could we please get together on the need to instruct our children in subject-verb agreement? Forget posting racy pics in an effort to create a permanent record of your sins. A permanent record of you blithering in AOL kiddiespeak is far more damaging to your long-term employability.

Now, on to the dishonesty, predators, wasting time and denying reality: Copping to the timesuck apect (damn you, Word Twist!), it occurs to me that a way around the reality denial and dishonesty is not to have your children be delusional liars to begin with. I've been online since there was an online to be on, and I've noticed that despite certain crazy exceptions, people tend to be online who they are in life. I've met lots of people in person that I first got to know online and, some social awkwardnesses anonymity helps us overcome aside, we're all pretty much the same people we are in pixels. People who are smart and funny are smart and funny. People who have short fuses have short fuses. People who are mean are mean.

The predator argument is one about paying attention and having some sense. I wouldn't shack up with somebody based on one comment at the Crack Den, but I wouldn't do so based on one date, either. No matter where you are, you need to be smart, and I know everybody's got a story about a predator, but how many of those stories wind up being about things that could have easily happened offline? Criminals were criminals before the Internet, and pretty much anyone who e-mails you out of the blue offering to do stuff for you for money is scamming you somehow.

A.

She Sells Sanctuary

 

 

In perusing my life over the past three weeks, it’s dawned on me that I’ve spent entirely too much time worried, pissed or in a funk. This kind of thing can happen when your governor decides to test the tensile strength of your asshole with a fucksaw, your kid is spiking a fever every six seconds and your wife is setting a record for “worst days at work ever.” I also found out that unless I can write two chapters in a week and a half, our book will be pushed back for more than a year and we will have violated a contract that they can then terminate.

I learned this week that Governor Deadeyes spent his formative pre-dropout college days probably stealing newspapers, that the dead poor soon will have more support than the living poor in this state and that giving up booze for Lent was probably the dumbest thing I could have done this year. I also realized that there is a tipping point between aggression and depression.

Something had to change, so I went to see a man about a horse

---

The snow mounds near the house had become leaking piles of dirt-tipped ice, with muddy pools of semi-ice popping up all throughout the area. The roads were dry and silted with a thin layer of dust, grime and rock salt. Mid-March in Wisconsin offers many things, but beauty isn’t one of them.

Hope, however, is.

We hope that spring will soon bloom. We hope that a freak snowstorm doesn’t cause us to regress toward winter and curse as we shovel. We hope gardens can be planted, heavy coats can be put away and grills can start filling the air with the smell of burning charcoal.

We hope. We have to.

With The Midget in tow, I eased the Civic into the back lot of the local oil change/car wash place. A feed-barn structure stretched out across the asphalt, presenting 12 unlabeled corrugated metal doors, each bolted shut with a padlock. I counted four doors from the right and dug in my pocket for a key.

The lock slid off easily but the rusty bolt took some elbow grease to crack. Finally, it slammed back into the side of the wooden frame. I dug into the small pile of snow at the base of the door, found the small metal handle and pressed it heavenward. The door collected along a spring-loaded roll as it moved out of the way.

The feeling was like being a kid running downstairs on Christmas morning. I found the best present under my tree at that very moment.

“Hello, Betsy.”

She sat there quietly, with dignity and sense of class, the way I imagine Cleopatra’s prized feline would. The trunk, recently rebuilt and repainted, glistened as the fading sunlight hit it. I sidled between the door and the sidewall of the structure and opened the hood. No mice, no puddles. Things were looking good.

I carefully removed the 87 sheets of Bounce fabric softener from the engine, wheels, interior, trunk and tailpipe. Someone told me that mice hated the texture and chemicals in Bounce dryer sheets and that they stored their car with sheets of Bounce all over it. I was uncertain if no mice had visited or if the Bounce had helped. At the very least, she smelled nice.

I slipped out of the storage facility and grabbed the car battery out of my trunk. I pressed it into the tray and attached the two cables. The light under the hood popped on, indicating that she still held a charge. Another good sign. I tightened down the cables and then I slid behind the wheel.

Three pumps, two cranks. She roared to life.

As she warmed up, I went back to the car. The Midget was hopping from seat to seat and having a great time. I grabbed a screwdriver and the horn pad that I’d spent half the winter refinishing and rebuilding. Without an airbag or a horn button, this was still a complicated little bastard. It had six plastic insets, a rubber pad that needed to be repainted, a new plastic chrome rim, a logo pin for the center and a foam pad it all was crammed into.

The rebuild wasn’t easy (painting rubber never is) but it was enough to keep me distracted from the fact that I was doing it in January and that it would be months until it were warm enough to get her out of storage.

I pushed the horn pad back onto the steering wheel and tightened it down. More parts were coming later this week. If FedEx got off its ass. The website was blaming late deliveries on “the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck eastern Japan.” Apparently, Lewisberry, Pennsylvania got hit with an aftershock or something, as my shipment got delayed twice.

The engine kicked down to a low hum, letting me know she was warm and comfortable, like my kid when she snuggles in on the couch while we watch Saturday morning cartoons. I eased Betsy out of the storage facility and transitioned The Midget from one car to another. I then put the Civic in the slot, locked her in and got back behind the wheel.

My body felt like it was one giant nerve.

“We get to ride in the MUSTANG!” The Midget shouted, almost as happy as I was. “Can we go to McDonald’s?”

I haven’t eaten McD’s food in almost six years, ever since a food-poisoning incident almost killed me. Even smelling the grease as I drive by is enough to give me a seizure.

“SURE!” I told her. “LET’S GO!”

I plugged in my iPod. The stereo connected and chose a song.

Thunder Road.

I eased her out of the lot and drove toward the closest circle of fast food Hell. I didn’t mind a bit.

---

We drove the back roads home, taking every possible “long-cut” we could. I found a stretch of country road that was deserted and dry. I stepped her down and she screamed with delight. Betsy tore across the asphalt, churning up dust, begging for more gas.

The Midget was gobbling down McNuggets and I had the radio on way too loud.

Smiles were everywhere.

It was at this point that I realized this was what I needed. I think in some way we all need something like this now.

Not everyone is going to get all sex-nuts over a car, but you’ve got to have something that you love to do, you love to see, you love to touch, you love to eat or you love to be near.

What I realized is that Scott Walker had done was worse than taking away our money or our unions or our rights.

He tried to take away our joy, our hope, our love. In having to gear up every day to fight an opponent who had no soul, we were losing our own.

As the protests continue, as the lawsuits rack up and as our “new normal” begins to emerge, we must remain vigilant against the tyranny of evil men.

However, find something small, something worthy, something freeing and let yourself enjoy it. Even for a moment.

Without it, you might forget what you’re fighting for.

On God's Side

In addition to the highest-ranking Roman Catholic in the state, unions have picked up support from other people whose phone lies go straight to the top:

Others chimed in with Bishop Linda Lee of the Wisconsin Conference of the United Methodist Church writing to Walker: “…far more is accomplished for the best interests of all those we serve when employers and employees work together, I am writing to ask you to reconsider your initiative.” And Rabbi Renée Bauer, director of the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice of South Central Wisconsin has spoken out against Walker’s legislation and is circulating a letter which says “as rabbis this an affront to our values—the Jewish mandate to protect workers, as well as the poor and needy among us… And it is an affront to our belief that these issues should be debated openly and fairly under public scrutiny.”

Good on them. This is not just a procedural issue, it's a moral one, and casting it as such will sway some folks who otherwise tend to tune out anything "political" as somehow being beyond their understanding.

A.

Milwaukee's Archbishop Stands With Unions, And So Should You

This morning Milwaukee's top Roman Catholic figured out where his bread was buttered:

"The Church is well aware that difficult economic times call for hard choices and financial responsibility to further the common good. Our own dioceses and parishes have not been immune to the effects of the current economic difficulties. But hard times do not nullify the moral obligation each of us has to respect the legitimate rights of workers.

"As Pope Benedict wrote in his 2009 encyclical, Caritas in veritate:

‘Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labor unions. Hence traditional networks of solidarity have more and more obstacles to overcome. The repeated calls issued within the Church's social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum [60], for the promotion of workers' associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honored today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level. [#25]'

Listecki was an auxiliary bishop in Chicago when I was at the Southtown. I interviewed him back then about his past, which makes it clear this is old home week for him. The story's not online but I looked it up this morning:

   He was the firstborn son of Alfreda Kasprzyk and Harry Listecki, who
first owned taverns and then drove a city bus. The family lived near the
steel mills in South Chicago, in an area populated by first-generation
Polish and Mexican immigrants and St. Michael, he remembered, was "the
Polish cathedral."
   He attended St. Michael the Archangel Catholic School and then Quigley
Preparatory Seminary South, where he said his youthful choice was affirmed
by his teachers and fellow students.
   "You were thrown together with young men who had a singular vision or
singular desire to see whether or not they could be priests," Listecki said.
"Imagine a 14-year-old or a 15-year-old who says this is what I want to be,
and makes a commitment to do that. That shapes whatever you're going to do
for the rest of your life. That already defines pretty much your character."
   In the summers, seminarians were allowed to work to earn money, so when
he turned 18 Listecki walked across the street to U.S. Steel and applied for
a job. He got one, in the blast furnaces, hot and dirty work even for
someone used to hard tasks.
   "Let's put it this way, it's not desirable to work in," he said. "To be
a laborer in those places, you know what it is to labor."

Damn right. I've seen a lot of comfortably situated loudmouths today asking, "Why should you be protected from losing your job, if I'm not?"

I wish they asked the question, "Why don't I have protection from the most capricious employers, from the whims of shareholders, from bosses who would rather steal than steward?"

I wish they asked the question, "Seeing these people united, how can I go on alone?"

I wish they asked the question, "Who will be there for me when someone rips the world out from under me?"

They say, you shouldn't be safe if I'm not.

Thirty thousand people in Wisconsin say, I am not safe if you're not.

A.

The Chasm Between the Saved and the Damned

So Eric Erickson made an ass out of himself today. That's not surprising. What is surprising is this:

The topic of faith in Christ makes people cringe. But whether you believe it or not, here is the reality: beyond us is a world we cannot see with our eyes. It impacts us on a daily basis. It is a world of very real angels and very real demons. It is a world of a very real God and a very real Satan, a very real Heaven and a very real Hell.

The back and forth and accusations and lies surrounding Jared Loughner should be a constant reminder to us that there is more at play in our world than what we see. And, frankly, at times like this I am more and more mindful of the great chasm in this world between the saved and damned.

Because to be honest, I don't give conservatives a lot of credit when it comes to faith. I tend to think most of them are just jerking off when they talk about Their Jesus, using Him like a get-out-of-jail-free card and a way to deflect the conversation. It's why "the topic of faith in Christ" makes people cringe. It isn't out of revulsion at Christ; even those who don't worship Him seem to agree He's a fairly decent sort of person who would be harmless if not for His asshole fan club. It's at the transparency of your attempt to get us to stop talking about the dead hookers or the baby rabbits or whatever other sick shit you're into by blithering on about how much you love some undead carpenter, like THAT is more normal.

But this? This is AWESOME.

Real angels and real demons fighting for our souls! A direct call-out to the Left Behind crew that MAYBE THE RAPTURE HAS ALREADY HAPPENED and now they all have to be Kirk Cameron and defend the Earth or whatever that bullshit was about. The chasm between the saved (conservatives, presumably, and people who drag Christ into conversations that don't need His intervention, like, let the man sort His junk mail or whatever, already, sheesh) and the damned (liberals, I guess, and anybody who points out that faith in Christ doesn't stop a speeding bullet) is now Our Earth, and what Erickson's asking here is what side you're on.

I personally would be inclined to be on the side that says all things being equal, the Zombie Apocalypse is the Zombie Apocalypse and I'mma stock up on dry goods at the store this weekend either way.

A.

 

 

Not Reception

THIS:

The book states that, for him, the worst moment of his presidency was, not 9/11, or the hundreds of thousands he killed or maimed, or the millions he made homeless in Iraq and jobless in the United States, but when the rapper Kanye West said, in a fundraiser for Katrina victims, that Bush didn’t care about black people.

West was only half right. Bush is not particularly racist. He never portrayed Hispanics as hordes of scary invaders; Condi was his workout buddy and virtually his second wife; he was in awe of Colin Powell; and he was most comfortable in the two most integrated sectors of American society, the military and professional sports. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about black people. Outside of his family, he didn’t care about people, and Billy Graham taught him that ‘we cannot earn God’s love through good deeds’ – only through His grace, which Bush knew he had already received.

Right. He was done. This is my problem, right here. He was already okay with himself and the world no matter what he did or didn't do in life, so this was all like Candyland to him, like a big adventure game where nothing was real. People like him have learned the wrong lesson from that book they like to talk so much about. It's not, hey, you're saved, now you get to kick back and be a dick the rest of your life. I really loathe the passivity with which we talk about religion a lot of the time, like you just sit around feeling things and that's the point.

Yes, this is the part of the holidays where I talk about God a lot. I've spent the past year -- I can't believe it's been a year she's been gone, except as my aunt said at Christmas sometimes it seems longer and sometimes not -- walking like a duck and talking like a duck and listening to two priests boil everything down to, basically, "try not to be such a shithead all the time, please." I still feel very few urges to quack or to migrate and I can't swim at all. I'm trying to be patient. It's not like faith has a deadline. Act as if ye have faith, I say to myself a lot.

But ... faith will be given to you? I'm not sure I want it given to me. Part of the problem with how I approach this is that I think about it as earning something. Working at it. Doing things. Even if it's just prayer, whispered to probably a Void, that's still action, still address and not reception. I don't feel like this will ever be done. I don't really think I'll ever be a duck. I get irrationally pissed off at bumper stickers on the freeways: Don't Let the Car Fool You, My Treasure is In Heaven, and I come home and read a guy writing about a science fiction show:

What if we're not storing up riches in Heaven? What if there's no Gods, and Earth is a lie after all? What then? This is why Communists are atheists: what if this is all there is? What if we keep running, forever? The lines we draw in the salt now, the systems we put in place now, aren't just preserving the Colonies as they are, they're creating the Colonies as they will be. The responsibility isn't just to preserving democracy and the spirit of the Colonies while in a time of war, but making allowances for what happens if this never ends. If all we have left are rough spots, what then?

And I think, okay, what then? If this is it? Assume this is all there is, the responsibilities we have here to be decent people don't go away. I really hate talking about God like he's a get out of jail free card, talking about grace like it's about deserving and undeserving. That's what this comes down to, for Bush here, the idea of grace and forgiveness as a finish line, as a gold star on a school paper, as opposed to maybe the midpoint of a marathon, and you still have to keep running, hoping you'll sprout wings and fly.

A.

ps. Speaking of God stuff, did anybody but me really like The Book of Eli? Maybe it's just my current post-apocalyptic kick, and Mila Kunis is crazy hot in it, but I've watched it twice now and I freaking loved it. It got bad reviews.

You fed me when I was hungry

I am your savior

I am your lover

I am several others

and I am your mother

who moves from your presence

If we're lucky and the timing is right, and we're paying attention, sometimes we find our people, whether we get to know them as friends and intimates, or whether they become teachers, icons, books on our shelves, that poem we've carried with us from house to house to house over the years, the ones who, literally or metaphorically, feed us when we're hungry.

I can't imagine how I'd feel about this mean cold world if Patti Smith hadn't always been around, more than once, when I was hungry over the years. What a gorgeous warm soul.

The National Book Awards are announced tonight.  Smith's one of 20 finalists for her wonderful Just Kids.

 

Fifty Years Ago

 

Above is the scene outside Frantz Elementary School in the Bywater neighborhood in New Orleans in 1960. It's now a hipster haven but back then Bywater was a hard scrabble working class area and it was where the battle over NOLA school integration was waged fifty years ago this week.

Representatives of Tulane University approached the Orleans Parish School Board about using a school near Tulane's Uptown campus as the inaugural site. They were rejected. Why? The Tulanians (bless their hearts) wanted desegregation to succeed and the OPSB wanted it to fail. Here's how Picayune columnist Jarvis DeBerry describes the scene:

That's what's so impressive -- and bewildering -- about the parents of Ruby Bridges, Gail Etienne, Pam Foreman, Yolanda Gabrielle, Tessie Prevost and Leona Tate. Fifty years ago this week, they sent their babies -- five first-graders and a kindergartner -- to William Frantz Elementary and McDonogh No. 19 through a gauntlet of spewing and sputtering segregationists so committed to their backwardness that they assembled to yell obscenities at small children.

Ruby Bridges, for example, taught one of her playmates a new chant she'd heard, and the girls jumped rope to it: "Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate."

Nobody would have blamed the girls' parents if they'd decided to protect their children from such hate-filled madness. Good people would have understood if the parents succumbed to a loving impulse to cover the girls' eyes and ears and remove them from a campus where so many bigots had gathered to yell at them. Nobody would have blamed them. Which makes their decisions all the more worthy of praise. They didn't have to buck against the status quo. They didn't have to offer their children up for the integration experiment. But they did.

Thinking about what happened here in New Orleans fifty years ago shows us both how much and how little things have changed. We no longer have howling mobs of people screaming obscenities at children for the crime of being "the other" but we still have howling mobs of people denouncing people for being Muslim and calling the first African-American President a Nazi/Marxist/Grandma killer.

Eventually, of course, the mobs dispersed but white flight from OPSB schools accelerated. Since I usually beat up on the current hierarchy of the Catholic Church, I have to give some credit to then Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel for his role in both calming the situation and shaming the protesters. Rummel, who I once heard described by a priest as a "big German dude," denounced the protests, supported integration and declared that racism was a mortal sin. Hence the sign in the picture at the top. Rummel also put his money where his mouth was by intergrating the diocese and parochial schools. A brave man in a time of cowardice and bigotry.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

I'll let Jarvis DeBerry have the last word. He's a closer, y'all:

Children seemed to always be on the front lines in our country's often bloody battle for civil rights. Not all of them wanted to be. The 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Miss., shocked the national conscience, and months later, Rosa Parks was refusing to budge from her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus. In September 1963, four little girls in Sunday School at Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church died when the Ku Klux Klan attacked their church with dynamite. The next year President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

And in 1960, six little girls in New Orleans -- four black, two white -- were sent by their parents into a hate-filled mob. What a heart-wrenching decision that must have been.

What a sad place this would be if they hadn't made it.

DSTWTFUS: Wade! Wade! Wade!

Going out of turn because forward or backwards, the daylight savings transition is tough and we need some WTFU up in here. Hence, Mavis. Mighty. Mighty. The lady said "Wade!" Y'all get to it.

There's a seven-minute version of this on the very wonderful Live: Hope at the Hideout. I listen to it nearly every day on my commute and I swear that track is as essential to my wellbeing as any of the meds I take.

Take heed y'all, this woman is still very much with us and performing regularly. If you haven't seen her live, you got no damn excuse. She's one of our treasures and she WILL take you there.

 

WWTFUS: The Great Pumpkin, the Man in Black, and Bodhichitta

Firstly, this wasn't really a major story in the big scheme of things, but I find it awfully illustrative as to the character of the opposition and it reminds us not just who we fight but who we fight for.  I happened to be hanging out on Twitter when it went down, I follow @rosannecash and I admire the way she handled Boehner, as well as the subsequent personal assaults by craphurling winged monkeys unleashed by Politico's post. 

Secondly, what Merle says below sort of points out that no one of us, whether in heartfelt admiration (my grandma was fond of saying that she loved Johnny Cash just like she did her own equally flawed yet mostly goodhearted sons) or in venal opportunism (Boehner), has any real rights of appropriation to the individuals who become our cultural icons, but we still keep trying to possess them nonetheless, usually to their ultimate detriment. And to ours.

Thirdly, that said, when such an individual, or said individual's family, tells you to back the f*ck off, backing the f*ck off is usually considered the decent thing to do, at least by principled folk.

Fourthly, on the eve of a monumental election, shouldn't Politico have been putting their energies to something, I don't know, a bit more substantive?

Fifthly, as expletives go, "asshat" barely qualifies, despite Smith's pearlclutching.

And finally, even when I was a kid, this song always made me cry, and it still does. Splits me open straight to a tender, unguarded place. That tender ragged place is a good place to be this dark morning, rather than curled up, closed off, defended, and blind.

"Till things are brighter," this is good practice for these times. So, I guess thanks to the Great Pumpkin are in order for this reminder of our marching orders, and a chance to revisit an enduring piece of art by one of our great flawed warriors.

Bacon is a terrible thing to waste

Some malaka wasted some perfectly good bacon in Secession/Thurmond/DeMintville. I'm not sure if this qualifies as porky tagging or as a particularly greasy hate crime. You decide:

Slices of bacon were laid down on a brink walkway to the Florence Islamic Center in Florence, S.C. on Sunday in a manner that spelled out "PIG CHOPS." The incident -- evidently aimed the center because of the Islamic dietary restrictions against pork -- is just the latest in a string of anti-Muslim episodes around the country.

In fact this isn't the first time even this particular mosque has been hit -- earlier this year vandals broke windows in the facility, according to local news station ABC 15.

They Call Me Mr. Obvious

The Cranick house fire story and the reaction to it has legs. The wingnut reaction makes me proud to be a godless secular atheist.

Anyway, Athenae's post, Christians Let Houses Burn, earlier today was superb. It also gave me an earworm and, well, it's embarrassingly obvious. Now where did I put my big suit?

 

Christians Let Houses Burn

I can't believe I'm linking approving to Little Green Footballs but honestly, here:

The Judeo-Christian tradition is clear that we must accept individual responsibility for our own decisions and actions. He who sows to the flesh, we are told, will from the flesh reap corruption. The law of sowing and reaping is a non-repealable law of nature and nature’s God. …

This story illustrates the fundamental difference between a sappy, secularist worldview, which unfortunately too many Christians have adopted, and the mature, robust Judeo-Christian worldview which made America the strongest and most prosperous nation in the world. The secularist wants to excuse and even reward irresponsibility, which eventually makes everybody less safe and less prosperous. A Christian worldview rewards responsibility and stresses individual responsibility and accountability, which in the end makes everybody more safe and more prosperous.

I’m going with mature, robust Christianity on this one.

Not just Christianity. ROBUST Christianity. Christianity with muscles. Christianity that drives a truck. Christianity that kicks your ass. Christianity that drinks Schlitz. Christianity that fucks your sister. Christianity that roots for the Yankees. Christianity that slaps its cock on the table. Christianity that listens to the Rolling Stones 24 hours a day. Christianity that tells that guy beaten up by the side of the road to quit waiting for some Samaritan, get his ass up and start walking, bloody compound fractures be damned. Christianity like that.

I'm about done with every moment of weakness, every bit of bad fortune that happens to someone who isn't a closeted Republican caught with a rent boy, being blamed on an insufficiently mean disposition and substandard desire to live better. For serious, these people spend more time figuring out ways to excuse themselves from giving a shit than they do actually giving a shit, and what about that is exactly responsible or, to use their phrasing, Christian? No wonder nobody helps anybody else in this country anymore; with all the time expended avoiding caring, there's barely enough left for brushing our teeth.

Let's be very clear about this: At some point in your life you are going to get knocked on your ass harder than you ever thought you could get knocked or your ass could take. You are going to be flat on your back, and your only hope at that point will be that someone is out there who can and will help you. A friend. A family member. A cop. A lawyer. An agency. A goddamn firefighter with a goddamn fire hose. Your only hope will be that your desperate call into the black will be heard by someone, anyone, who can and will fix what is broken.

And at that point, that point when you're standing next to your life watching it burn to the ground, all this rhetoric we throw around all day every day in this country about responsibility and hard choices and boostraps will ring hollow in your head. All the things you've told your own self about misfortune not being random, about enough planning being able to overcome any eventuality, about how you've saved and studied and worked and tried so, so hard to stay on the straight and narrow, all that will fall away.

You'll be left with the echo of your own voice saying, over and over again, "Help me. Please." And I hope, hope, hope for your sake that the Christianity you're met with then is less than robust.

A.

Guys? Jesus Has Boobs in This Picture

I think the blow job is the least of our canon problems.

A.

Burn, Baby, Burn

Okay, this Quran-burning dick. Fine. Look, I feel about this blatant attention-whore the same way I feel about half the shit Hitchens says, Piss Christ, Draw Muhammed Day and any number of other cheap-ass stunts designed to do nothing but IGNITE A FIRESTORM OF CONTROVERSY. Yadda yadda, defend to the death your right to do so, yadda. It makes me profoundly tired that people get to peacock around about this crap while the smoke rises over Rome. 

Burning books. Nobody's ever done that before. What a novel statement. What infuriates me about this nonsense is what always infuriates me about it: You are making a very boring and oldsauce point — Islam sucks — via a method designed not to stimulate discussion of the merits of said point but to focus debate on yourself and your actions and the wisdom thereof. Witness that we are not now talking about whether Islam (or Christianity for that matter) is a force for good or evil or Chaotic Neutral or whatever term we're using these days. We're talking about if some goddamn lunatic's barbecue is going to cause soldiers to get blown up more.

This two-bit circus clown already has what he wanted most in the world: TV cameras at his door. Fucking performance artist. Look at me, look at me, look at me, aren't I scary? And if you turn away, out of sheer disbelief that anybody would want to make you watch while he jerks off in public, you're just PROVING how bourgeois you are, how enslaved to conventional thought.

Didn't everybody date this guy in college? And didn't everybody get tired of being the Best Supporting Actor in his fucking story? Just me? What can I say, 18-year-old me was a sucker for poetry-writing cokeheads. Anybody who struts around being shocking so that he can shock people into being shocked and then make fun of them for how shocked they are can eat a bag of dicks, in general, and specifically as it relates to this individual.

And as for liberal guilt with regard to supporting the "Ground Zero mosque" but not advocating in support of this fucknut:

Liberals couldn't care less about the First Amendment. To the contrary, censoring speech and religion is the left's specialty! (Any religion other than Islam.)

They promote speech codes, hate crimes, free-speech zones (known as "America" off college campuses), and go around the country yanking every reference to God from the public square via endless lawsuits by the ACLU.

Whenever you see a liberal choking up over our precious constitutional rights, you can be sure we're talking about the rights of Muslims at Ground Zero, "God Hates Fags" funeral protesters, strippers, the New York Times publishing classified documents, pornographers, child molesters, murderers, traitors, saboteurs, terrorists, flag-burners (but not Quran-burners!) or women living on National Endowment of the Arts grants by stuffing yams into their orifices on stage.

Points for use of the word "yams" which is like my favorite word ever. FAIL on the rest of it, though:

Jeffery Wright is a political ideologue that would stop at NOTHING to gain an advantage over his political opposition, including causing harm to America. 

Because intent matters, not to the law, but to public opinion (or it should). It matters what point you're making. This isn't a contest of who's being the most provocative and Jeffrey Wright is winning so fuck him. It matters to me if you're building a mosque in Lower Manhattan to promote tolerance and openness or if you're starting a bonfire to fuck with imaginary jihadis and call attention to yourself.

I may defend your right to do both, but don't expect me to applaud the latter.

A.

People Believe What They Believe

In the comments to the teawad post, Spocko writes:

I have a quote from the neocon theocon rw radio host I never used because it explains a lot. He said that he can not respect another religion because then what would that say about his religion. To even acknowledge another religion as okay is a "slap in the face"
That inability to be okay with your religion without attacking another religion shows just how weak they see their religion.

Which is close, I think. How do you prove your faith without running down that of others? How confident can you be in your own life if you can't compare yourself favorably to another? How do you know you're doing the right thing, if you can't make out like somebody else is doing wrong?

How, in the face of someone else's truth, in the face of someone else's peace or joy or satisfaction, do you justify your own?

I was brought up in a serious religious environment: church on Sundays, prayers before meal- and bedtimes, Catholic school for 12 years. We had an advent wreath at Christmas and went to the holy day Masses. We weren't casual Catholics, I mean, even compared to my Catholic school friends we were pretty hardcore.

But I had to ask my little brother, a while back during some other incident of religious stupidity, if he could ever remember, ever even once, hearing an unkind word about a Protestant or Jew or Muslim in our house, growing up. In general or specifically about an individual because of that individual's faith. I had to ask him because I couldn't recall a single incident in which someone else's religion was put up for ridicule or seen as a threat or even commented on at any length.

Now, part of that might have been that it was a fairly homogeneous white Christian town and thus the opportunities for comparative religion seminars were limited, but still, we had TV, it's not like we didn't know the rest of the world existed. And the most I ever heard either of my parents say (possibly spurred by seeing someone in a yarmulke or veil) was that some people believed other things, but that we believed what we believed.

It was seen as No Big Thing that not everybody thought and practiced the same way, and I used to think it was because doctrinal debate was tiresome and everybody was busy and we were too young, but now I think the people I knew growing up just didn't care, and I mean that in the best sense. It was a useful lesson: You don't need to concern yourself. Your responsibility is to get your sinful ass to church on Sunday. Somebody else has another job.

Without running someone else down, how do you know you're okay? You know because if you are okay, you don't need to run someone else down. You don't need to see someone else's faith as a threat. You don't see in every family speaking Spanish in a store the menacing brown immigrant hordes. You don't look at a mosque being built as "the Islamization of America." This is the way of the world. You look at them, look at yourself, and go on about your day.

A.

Shorter Media: It Followed Us Home, Mom!

Sigh:

To the chagrin of many, the media gravitates towards controversy. It is in their (our) DNA. Whether anyone or everyone likes it or not, it is what they do. It’s why politics and sports, mystery and mayhem dominate coverage. This story includes the ultimate elixir for media coverage: emotion, politics, terrorism, religion and bias. Some will say that the existence of those elements alone shouldn’t mean that the media must play into the hands of those appealing to biases and the most base of human instincts. True, so then what makes this controversy deserving of days and days of saturated media coverage? Who knows how much coverage is appropriate, but it’s obvious that when terrorists attack the U.S., sensitivities will be high to anything large built in that area a year after the fact or even almost ten years later. The area around Ground Zero is news because its [sic] Ground Zero. Period. Building a center two blocks away which supports the very cause that the terrorists claimed (at least by name) was their calling, increases its news value exponentially. It doesn’t validate the terrorists’ warped view of Islam, but, like it or not, in this day and age, it makes it news. Simply dismissing the entire controversy as a non-story is to presume that no one should question the prudence of building the facility at that location. That is also to take a side in the debate.

Emphasis mine. Whatchoogonnado? I mean, who knows what's appropriate, but it's obvious that whatever we did was totally appropriate, because SACRED HALLOWED GROUND, and also Muslims who are called to fly planes into buildings, and stuff. Like it or not, we had no choice but to jump on the story and then cover ourselves covering the story and then debate if the coverage was appropriate and then, magically, come to the conclusion that it was! Thank God. I was really nervous for a while there that we might learn something. Crisis averted.

A.

Note to Harry

When ORRIN FUCKING HATCH is being compared favorably to you on issues of religious freedom, it is time to re-evaluate whether you are making appropriate use of the oxygen you are being given.

A.

Radical Examples of Faith

This:

I know I'm just an iniquitous heathen doomed to be consigned to eternal hellfire and all, but this advice strikes me as part of the reason so many young people are falling away from USian Christianity: It reeks of privilege and cynicism to suggest that the average Christian can, and should—after spending the first sixteen (or however many) years of your kid's life not living a life that suggests "how Christians live" is by making radical sacrifices—pick up and take off to work for a summer in Bolivia.

 

(And why Bolivia, and not Detroit? I think we all know the answer to that, and it isn't very Christian, ahem.)

 

The entire concept of doing something "radical" in order to get your kids excited about their faith is so contrived; I've no doubt that seeing one's parents be radically generous because altruism is a centerpiece of their faith can be inspiring to kids being raised in religious households, but not when their parents are putting on a show just to convince their kids to be god-believers.

 

Call me kooky, but I don't think eternal principles are meant to be conveyed with the same transparent impetuousness as getting dragged to a museum after Mom gets a bug up her ass that we all need more culture in this house, dammit!

I have my own thoughts about consumer show-off Christianity, and consumer show-off Religion Lite, and how totally useless it is both as religion and as its closest cousin, therapy, but getting into who's a Real Person of Faith has its own pitfalls. Better building houses in Bolivia than buying Purpose-Driven Life tchotchkes, I guess, and really whatever keeps you out of trouble is okay with me.

But the idea that you're going to flail around desperately trying to prove your faith to your children all of a sudden, with some grand glorious major gesture, I mean, I dunno, are kids that stupid? My parents' passions in life have changed over the years, but there are some constants, through all of them, it's not like suddenly Mom came home one day and declared this Shakespeare fellow really had something going on. (She likes the comedies, whereas my taste tends toward the bloody histories. How I love the Henries.)

Faith, though, that's where it's hard to say what's radical. Taking a summer vacation and going to Bolivia? I guess that is radical. Is it more radical than, say, getting up every day and caring for an ailing relative? Is it more radical than spending six months, a year sitting around a table every week with other members of one's parish trying to figure out how to keep the doors open? Is it more radical than the simple act of praying over dinner every night, hell or high water, such that it becomes a touchstone and a grounding moment in your children's lives?

Is it more radical to make a grand gesture or to be there, in the day to day? I can tell you which way I come down, and it's the same thing that makes me hate, hate, hate romantic comedies: The grand gesture, the stereotypically radical act, that's easy. It was all over for Jesus in three days, so don't talk to me about the cross. It's easy to stand up when the fanfare's sounding and the banners are blowing in the wind on the castle walls. It's easy to be the center of attention, to be the Hero in the story being told. Hold the boombox over your head in the early morning light, look at me, showing you and the world how much I love you. How big my feelings are. Look at me.

So much harder, so very much harder, to just get up every day and try to be decent. So much less immediately rewarding. So grinding and slow, and it takes years for anybody to even NOTICE what you're doing. A million little things are just a million little things, one by one, day by day: Baking cookies, shaking people's hands, being unfailingly kind in a world that rewards bitchery and self-indulgence. A million little things don't look like anything, except from above. Then they form a pattern, they tell a story, from end to end, and it's the story of a radical life.

That's a harder lesson to teach than throwing all your stuff overboard and building houses in Bolivia, but it's the kind of lesson in faith that lasts.

A.

Kill the Blind Squirrel! Kill It Now!

Tribune commenters don't take kindly to Steve Chapman's location of a nut in opining that once upon a time Republicans thought being horrible bigoted assholes would be a BAD THING:

You "liberals" are the saddest bunch of all.  This is not an issue about the constitutional right to religion, this is the propriety of rubbing salt into the wounds of so many.  Reid, who is usually wrong about so much, so-much as said so himself and he is certainly not a conservative (though usually he has his head up his liberal hole).

No one said that the muslim religion can't be proacticed, it is a question of whether THIS location sets the best example of "
showing consideration" as a tolerant religion (my god, they kill people of their own faith by stoning).  Now there is something the liberals can identify with, its a lot like abortion as a way of showing tolerance of womens rights to choose!

Talk about hypocrits!

---

You're right, the majority of Muslims are good people. In fact, estimates are that only 1% of Muslims are radical. Do the math. That's not a few thousand. It's 12 million!

---

This issue has ZERO to do with religious liberties. It has to to do with LOCATION and that SENSITIVTY the left so cares about.

This is no different than building a Japanese religious icon next to the Arizona monument in the sacred waters of Pearl Harbor.

Chapman's column is actually quite good, harkening back to when Republicans were a major voice for the rights of Arabs and Muslims. Back to when a certain Republican governor from Texas, running for president, actually challenged the legality of secret evidence in immigration trials. It seems like a million years ago now.

Most of the time, when local authorities throw up roadblocks before unwanted religious groups, they do so in a way designed to conceal their real motive. Here, though, the critics object to the center precisely because it involves Muslims doing nothing more than practicing their religion.

There is nothing covert or subtle about the opponents' motives. To stop the building on the grounds that Islam has no place near ground zero would clearly defy the law's ban on religious discrimination.

That prohibition is a credit largely to conservatives who understood the dangers of putting religion at the mercy of government. The law was an effort by Republicans (and many Democrats) to protect the rights of believers — especially despised minorities.

Just crazy, the world we used to live in.

A.

Hallowed

There's a word being thrown around a lot with regard to the Cordoba House location.

Hallowed.

WASHINGTON — A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).

When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there — and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized or misappropriated.

But that's not actually what it means at all.

hallowed [ˈhæləʊd (liturgical) ˈhæləʊɪd]

adj

1. (Christianity / Ecclesiastical Terms) set apart as sacred

2. (Christianity / Ecclesiastical Terms) consecrated or holy

hallowedness  n

To be consecrated. To be set apart. To be by human hands designated as holy, not by some god or gods, not by a mystery or visitation, but by the use to which humans intend it be put. Action, not passivity. Location matters, Krauthammer lectures us, but. Voice matters too. We do this. We consecrate and hallow this ground. It is what we make it.

Cemeteries are for history and proof, for a space where communication with the dead makes sense. Churches, temples, mosques, meeting halls, circles are for reaching upward toward God as he reaches down to us, for a meeting place between the human and the divine where each can see the other's glory. An altar is a table, where something is broken and shared by all who come to it, in radical and absolute equality. Without those gathered for the meal, it's just a table. These places are not defined as sacred space by lines on a map; it's their use that makes them what they are. It's how the people within them behave. Their purpose comes from what is done there. The ground isn't the point.

I'm a Roman Catholic by baptism, confirmation and choice, so my experience of the word is tempered this way: We are divided into parishes, but a parish isn't a building. It's a collection of souls. Did you know that a parish priest is responsible for everyone in his parish, not just the Catholics, still less just the Catholics who come to Mass and give to the collections and send their kids to the school? The ones doing it right, they're responsible for everybody. For the care of all the souls in that parish, Catholic or no. For anyone who comes to their doors. The ones doing it right, that is. Precious few of those, these days. Still, the principle matters. The word, people tell us now, matters. Hallowed.

The noun is from the Old English adjective hálig, nominalized as se hálga "the holy man". The Gothic word for "holy" is either hailags or weihaba, weihs. "To hold as holy" or "to become holy" is weihnan, "to make holy, to sanctify" is weihan. Holiness or sanctification is weihia. Old English like Gothic had a second term of similar meaning, weoh "holy", with a substantive wih or wig, Old High German wih or wihi (Middle High German wîhe, Modern German Weihe). The Nordendorf fibula has wigiþonar, interpreted as wigi-þonar "holy Donar" or "sacred to Donar". Old Norse vé is a type of shrine. The weihs group is cognate to Latin victima, an animal dedicated to the gods and destined to be sacrificed.

Dedicated to the gods. Most of those opposed to the mosque, most of those defenders of freedom and liberty and those square blocks of lower Manhattan, would call themselves Christian. I don't think they have the foggiest, but that isn't the point either. The point is that dedicating a place to God so as to turn others away from it is pointless and stupid and wrong. Is an empty church hallowed? Is salted earth hallowed? How far must the hallows reach? How many miles must their borders enclose? Someone has died everywhere you look. Photos and crosses and teddy bears at intersections, growing dirty and tattered in the wind and sun. Where do the boundaries end? Where is it appropriate to build a place to reach upward and sing to God of the glory of mankind?

Everywhere is hallowed. Someone I can't now find to cite wrote that Jesus' whole, you know, thing is that systems don't matter the most, abstract ideas don't matter the most, that people matter the most. What we do to and for and with each other matters the most. We hallow the ground. We hold it holy. Not by praying there, or not praying there, but by being there ourselves and acting as dedicated to the gods. The rest of it is differences in expression and thought and symbol and I'd never say those don't matter, but they don't matter more than we should matter to one another.

If we're doing this right, if we're holding a place as holy, setting apart as sacred and dedicated to the use of God, a place, it should be everywhere. It should be an expanse wider than we can measure, and we should never reach the borders. And in that space should be the burning wreckage and the ashes, and the strip clubs, and the fast food restaurants, and the gay bars, and the straight bars, and the mosques, and the temples, and the churches, because if we're doing this right, this is all hallowed ground.

A.

Liz Sidoti: Mosque Is An Election-Year Hurdle -- For Democrats

Of course it is. It wouldn't be an election-year hurdle for Republicans, though you could write that story just as easily. Here, I'll do it for you:

WASHINGTON – Add another election-year hurdle for Democrats Republicans: President Barack Obama's forceful defense of the right of Muslims to build a mosque near the World Trade Center site.

His comments are giving Republicans Democrats a campaign-year cudgel and forcing Democrats Republicans to address a divisive issue within weeks of midterm contests that will decide the balance of power in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a competitive re-election fight, was the highest profile Democrat to move away from Obama on the matter.

"The First Amendment protects freedom of religion," Reid's spokesman Jim Manley said in a statement Monday. "Senator Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else."

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose constituents are actually affected by the issue, applauded the president's remarks as the highest-profile Republican to break ranks with his own party on the issue.

"If we shut down a mosque two blocks away from where freedom was attacked, I think it would be a sad day for America," Bloomberg told ABC News.

Democrats Republicans privately called some party members' demagoging of the issue a distraction when the party should be laser-focused on keeping comfortable gaining sizeable majorities in Congress. The political climate already favors Republicans Democrats as economically struggling voters look to unleash their fury on the party in power. have a long history of trusting Democratic presidents to turn the country around.

Granted, it's not as much fun as stringing together Tea Bag rage, a bunch of stuff "everybody knows" and a bunch of other stuff "some have said" into a narrative "we all know" so that you can get to the bar early tonight, but it would be just as valid as the flip side, which contains this bullshit:

Some Democratic candidates fear the political fallout that Republicans suggest is coming against those who support building a mosque two blocks from the lower Manhattan site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And some Republicans are trying to walk a careful line in their criticism, lest they be tagged religiously intolerant or be accused of stoking fear.

Yes. Heaven forbid they be accused of EXACTLY WHAT THEY'RE DOING. And of course the writer found some weak Democratic candidates who bitched that they had to address uncomfortable issues in an election year, but come on. This whole thing is a perfect illustration of the way laziness and stupidity infect political "analysis" journalism.

I say laziness instead of bias because: We all know the narrative. There's no way the story would have run the way I edited it above. Why not? Because we all know how this works, right? Amirite? Heh heh heh? We all know how this works. Actual freedom is a losing issue electorally, those who defend it are weaklings who want us to bend over for Hitler, Republicans standing up for Freedom (tm) always appeal to Real Americans (tm) who anyway are pissed about the economy and wish everybody would stop talking about the mosque so much.

And this narrative exists all by itself, being in absolutely no way created or at the very least reinforced by thumbsucking pieces from the AP that we're all supposed to pretend are Serious Journalism (tm). This narrative is in no way reinforced by every reporter's questions being framed as "So how big a wuss are you, Mr. President? Don't you know Some Democrats (tm) think you're hurting their cause with your Black Muslim Identity Politics? What do you say to Republicans who talk about the mosque nonstop and blame you for not talking about the economy? Aren't they right? I've been to those tea rallies. Lotsa anger out there."

I really can't wait until the AP sues all us lowly bloggers out of existence so they can get back to the critical thinking and gatekeeping they're so good at.

A.

Now It's Just Another America

Time was, we called it "a bunch of pig-ignorant fucknecks who should be shamed on the pages of our learned publications," but hey:

But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.

Yes. It does. You know fucking WHY, you stupid, privileged bitch? Because the people presently in charge are rich white Anglo-Saxon MEN who find it kind of awkward and passé to rag on Jews and Papists openly (but have NO problem talking shit about Mexicans when they think nobody else in the conversation will judge them).

You know what determines the expectation to assimilate to what degree? SIMPLE FUCKING NUMBERS. On a calendar and on the census. That's it. That's all. I expect you to speak English because I speak it. I expect you to keep your religious practices under wraps because I don't often publicly get into the whole "cannibalistic rite of flesh and blood" I practice every week.

I expect you to dress like me and act like me because I fucking CAN, because right now there are more people who look like me in positions of power than who look like you.

Because that's the one America, the one rule we all live by. Douthat makes this sound charmingly unrealistic:

There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims.

It is. But guess what? It's no less unrealistic than the first passage I quoted. It's no less a false construction, one that ignores a history that has always been about the ones who came before shaming and fighting the ones who came after, over and over again. The difference is that one should be encouraged and the other excoriated, so as to continue to move our society forward.

Then again, our national press ain't in the business of doing that these days. Our national press, pindick pundits like Douthat especially, is engaged in telling us that this is the world and we should accept it, kick back, maybe shake our heads but for God's sake don't get upset about it or anything because there's no point. I mean, the tone of this thing:

The first America celebrated religious liberty; the second America persecuted Mormons and discriminated against Catholics. But both understandings of this country have real wisdom to offer, and both have been necessary to the American experiment’s success.

Just screams to the reader, "Hey, don't worry about it! No reason to advocate for one side or the other! It's not like I'm a columnist! It's not like I should be telling you with the incredibly powerful voice I possess what our reaction as a society should be to the horseshit being spewed by one America or the other! Both have real wisdom to offer! Especially that whole 'discrimination against religious minorities' thing! Chill out! Whatchagonnado?" I mean, this is kind of our modern press's whole institutional thing right now. This is what we do, tell you how best to avoid that uncouth and self-righteous faux pas of actually giving a fuck.

I read a whole rage-inducing Time magazine thing over the weekend, about how the truth is just subservient to lies because of our culture, and you can't make fucknecks believe the truth anymore, so maybe what we ought to be doing is making excuses for the fucknecks so that they'll ... I dunno, buy Time magazine, like that's ever going to happen? It's the usual passivity, because iPhones, and the Internet, and anyway it's all too hard to sort out. My head hurts. I need to lie down. Nobody cares anyway.

This is the thing that makes me the most angry among the many things that make me angry about our bullshit press these days. I don't understand becoming a columnist, putting your voice out there, only to say so little. Only to call religious ignorance and dipshittery just another way of looking at the world, equally as valid as any other.

And by the way, Douthat's column was written in English.

This is America, motherfucker.

Speak Navajo.

A.

Out of Touch

So far, nobody can explain to me why that matters at all:

Earlier this month a New York City agency cleared the way for the construction of Cordoba House, a 13-story building that would include meeting rooms, a prayer space, an auditorium and a pool.

Some of the families of those killed in the attacks have mounted an emotional campaign to block it, calling the center provocative and a betrayal of the memory of the victims.

"It does put salt on the wound," King said. He urged Muslim leaders behind the project to reconsider the location.

[snip]

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll showed a majority of Americans across the political spectrum opposed the project being built near the site of the attacks.

The survey, released on Wednesday, showed nearly 70 percent of Americans opposed it, including 54 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of independents.

So what if 70 percent of Americans think the mosque shouldn't be built there? So what if a majority of Americans think religious freedom should take a backseat to the feelings of people who, by and large, not only weren't in New York on 9/11 but have never been to New York and likely won't go?

And so what if a broad political spectrum of people are against it? That proves nothing except that there are assholes and insects in every political party, and most of them are racist fucks who'd rather not have to deal with sticky, uncomfortable stuff like "religious freedom even for people I think suck" and "this is America, you can have your stuff anywhere you want even if it makes me itch." It's hardly news that Democrats, Independents and Republicans can be total dicksucks, even if that last has had kind of a lock on the market for the past decade or so.

So what if it hurts people's feelings? People's feelings are not law. People may be squicksome over this now, but on election day, are they going to vote based on that their kids don't have enough to eat, or are they going to vote based on the president said some stuff in a video address that nobody paid any attention to anyway, and some Republicans were jerks about it on Sunday shows nobody watches?

I mean, if we're gonna take the argument to that level you'd best bring it, King, because people's feelings are hurt over a lot of stuff right now. For example, many of us do not have jobs. Others have jobs but they suck. Others still are dying of preventable, curable diseases because doctors are expensive and/or inconvenient to them. And that's just the real stuff. I'm pretty sure I could find a plurality of Americans to oppose your hair, you chewy little fuck. Will you then shave it off? Do I have the right to tie you down and do it to you?

Prominent Republicans have opposed the proposed site of the center, saying it was insensitive and reopened the wounds of the attacks. On Sunday, several criticized Obama for what they said was his support of the center's construction and subsequent waffling on the issue.

"This is not about freedom of religion because we all respect the right of anyone to worship according to the dictates of their conscience ... but I do think it's unwise to build a mosque at the site where 3,000 Americans lost their lives as the result of a terrorist attack," Texas Republican John Cornyn said on the "Fox News Sunday" program.

"To me it demonstrates that Washington, the White House, the administration, the President himself seems to be disconnected from the mainstream of America," Cornyn said.

If the mainstream of America is a bunch of dicks who have no idea what America is actually about, then I say hallelujah, allahu ackbar, and GO TEAM, okay? Let's be clear on this: the president's duty is to the Constitution and the law of the land, not to how many dickheads King and Cornyn can make dance on the head of a pin. And if he wants to act like that for once, and tell these bigoted tools to go fuck themselves:

Well, my intention was simply to let people know what I thought. Which was that In this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion.

Then I say Happy Obama Photo, bitches: 

And by the by, this:

Republicans said the November elections will be about jobs, and that the president should be addressing high unemployment in the United States instead of speaking about religious freedom.

Is some quality bullshit. Howl and scream and release your flying monkeys to hassle all of America which IS busy with high unemployment and stuff in the world being generally broken, and then when the President has to step in and calm your asses down, claim he's diverting YOUR attention from the real problems. Sure. That's just great.

Schmucks.

A.

The Wars Aren't Over

From the Bloomberg speech that nearly made him a rare Happy Republican Photo last week:

“In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue, and they were turned down. In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies, and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.

“In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion, and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780s, St. Peter's on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site, and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.

We can never really move beyond anything, can we, until we can pass it along? You're not across the finish line, after all, unless somebody's behind you, following after.

It's so hard to know. How will we know we're safe, if we can't make someone else afraid? How will we know we're on solid ground, if we can't pull the rug out from under someone else? How will we know we're no longer the prisoners, unless we become the guards? Subjugation, we think, is a binary state. You are locked up, or you are holding the keys.

I say all the time that our memories of the war aren't about the war. They're about how we have to remember the war in order to survive the next one. And for Americans, those days after 9/11 were a haze of patriotic unity, and we hold fast to the idea that we survived by being righteous and being good, by flying flags and lighting candles and giving blood and loving the president, and being all we think we once were, all we think those who came before us would want us to be. That's how we remember that moment. It's not, for a moment, how it was. But God forbid anyone say different. It's a lovely story we made up in our heads, and it's how we have to believe it in order to get our heads around what's coming after.

It's so useless. It's so exhausting. I get tired just reading about Foxman and the ADL and every other huckster and attention whore who wants in on the contest about who loathes Islam more (Spoiler: Sarah Palin wins that contest). Aren't there some poor people we could feed, with all this energy and money and time? Do the dead give a fuck where a mosque is built? All this energy and money and time, and at the end of it, you lose, and there's the mosque, and ... nothing happens. The earth does not cave in, we do not live under Shariah law and have to eat halal chickens and whatever, and you're left with ... nothing. What have you changed? What have you done? What good lives in the world, because of you?

Carry the one. All this energy and money and time, and you WIN. There's no mosque, or it's built somewhere else, outside some magical line where offense can no longer be given to the story we've made up about what a place and a day mean and who we were there and then. There's no mosque. And you're left with ... what? Knowledge that a building isn't being built? What have you changed? What good lives in the world, because of you?

Subjugation isn't a binary state. You're holding the keys, tapping them lightly on the bars, sneering at the person behind the iron gate for being in there, while you're out here.

As if your life isn't just as much about prison, as his.

A.

Spiritual Adultery?

WTF is that?

Did you pray like the dickens yesterday, on the National Day of Prayer that Barack Obama hates so much? Yeah, we forgot too. But they say certain corners of Hell have been successfully gentrified in recent decades, so there’s always that. Anyway, there’s another prayer day, maybe, on May 23, and here’s the official Catalogue of Sins (PDF) that Jesus wrote on his conservative Acer PC, via the Family Research Council.

You know, Jesus, maybe I wouldn't have hooked up with Buddha (and it was just the ONE TIME, come on, we were on a break) if you'd put out once in a while.

A.

I'm the Only Virtuous One

It's shit like this that makes me loathe Kristof:

Yet the church leaders are right about one thing: there is often a liberal and secular snobbishness toward the church as a whole — and that is unfair.

It may be easy at a New York cocktail party to sniff derisively at a church whose apex is male chauvinist, homophobic and so out of touch that it bars the use of condoms even to curb AIDS. But what about Father Michael Barton, a Catholic priest from Indianapolis? I met Father Michael in the remote village of Nyamlell, 150 miles from any paved road here in southern Sudan. He runs four schools for children who would otherwise go without an education, and his graduates score at the top of statewide examinations.

Because the only reason to call attention to you as the only one who is standing up for the poor beleaguered "true" Catholic Church is to jerk yourself off, and the column would be better without making us all witness that. Close the bathroom door, for the love of God.

This is a particular journalist tic that is starting to piss me off in several contexts, and it takes exactly this form: Yes, there are problems, yes, all the liberal critics of X are correct, but I think liberal critics are using a nasty tone of voice and I'm going to make sure you notice ME ME ME ME ME pointing that out, so I can differentiate myself from them.

And by the way, could we criticize the church's stance on contraception or homosexuality or the role of women in ministry in such a way that WOULD please you, Nicky? Because last I fucking checked, the people leveling such criticism were also the ones trying to change those aspects of the church, and what you may see as "sniffing derisively," they see as, you know, advocacy of their positions. Maybe if they weren't so rude about it, or raised their pinky fingers while doing so.

It’s because of brave souls like these that I honor the Catholic Church. I understand why many Americans disdain a church whose leaders are linked to cover-ups and antediluvian stances on women, gays and condoms — but the Catholic Church is far larger than the Vatican.

And unless we’re willing to endure beatings alongside Father Michael, unless we’re willing to stand up to warlords with Sister Cathy, we have no right to disparage them or their true church.

Actually, we have every right to disparage their true church so long as that church continues to be complicit in covering up the systematic abuses of power that concealed the rape of children. We have every right to sniff derisively at a criminal enterprise that would make Tony Soprano say, "Whoa, dude." We have every right to scoff and scorn and I say that as a card-carrying member of the Roman cannibalistic crucifixion cult myself.

For defenders of the church to hold up examples of the people Kristof cites as some kind of shield against criticism should engender more outrage, not less, since these are the people whose work is being profaned. They should welcome every voice raised in opposition to the practices of the church, even if those voices come from very rude people.

And if you don't want to hear sniffing about the church at New York cocktail parties, there's a very easy way to avoid that. Stop going to them yourself, even if they do afford you the opportunity to be the most specialest nicest boy in the room.

Schmuck. 

A.

Cunctando Regitur Mundus

Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia!

Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia!

Who did once upon the cross, Alleluia!

Suffer to redeem our loss. Alleluia!

Appropriately enough, I have a wicked hangover.

I gave up booze for Lent, managed (with a few slips) to stick to it, and so when the sun set last night and some friends and I were celebrating a successful fundraiser for the ferret shelter, I decided to catch up on all the beer I'd missed, all at once. I keep forgetting I'm not an undergrad anymore.

So I dragged into church feeling like P. Diddy, prepared to limp through midmorning Slacker Mass as usual and then go home to get dinner for the family ready (I was thinking what, exactly, inviting everybody over here instead of making reservations?), but when I walked in the door, there was a party going on.

The priest, a jovial and bouncy guy not much older than me who knows how to open and close a story, had hidden chocolate and eggs all over the church. Under pews, behind statuary, even in the little slots where the matches for the candles rest. He hid colorful plastic toys in the hymnal holders and in the pots of hyacinths and lilies on the altar.

Kids in pink and yellow and green and blue, many with flowered hats, were gleefully crawling all over the splendid 1800s church in search of treasures. Their parents, with cameras, greeted one another and smiled and shook hands and hugged. The crucifix was draped with white, the doorways with pastel ribbons fluttering in the warm spring breeze.

The sanctuary was lit by the sunshine through the glorious stained glass windows. It smelled of flowers and rang with laughter. And I was suddenly so angry I couldn't breathe.

Hymns of praise then let us sing, Alleluia!

Unto Christ, our heavenly king, Alleluia!

Who endured the cross and grave, Alleluia!

Sinners to redeem and save. Alleluia!

I haven't written about the latest turn of the screw in the 8-year nightmare that is the "priest sex abuse scandal." I haven't written about it because Adrastos has it handled, because I'm not surprised by any of it, and because everything I could say, I said years ago:

I covered religion for four years as a reporter, and I was raised a Roman Catholic. As such, I knew many, many good priests, guys who'd do anything for you, guys who were the last thing standing between their neighborhoods and gang warfare, guys who were more angry than anybody that the high standards to which they held themselves were not the same standards to which their leaders were subjected.

I was a part of the team of people who brought this to light:

The very first year Imesch arrived in Joliet, one of his priests was questioned by the DuPage County sheriff's police. Parents at the Rev. Lawrence Gibbs' Lombard parish complained to Imesch about Gibbs' inappropriate behavior with their sons, but Imesch dismissed their concerns and transferred Gibbs to another parish without telling his new parishioners about the accusations. Gibbs was later accused of molesting numerous altar boys at a cabin in the north suburbs.

The Rev. Fred Lenczycki, now serving a prison sentence for child sexual abuse, was transferred to various parishes and eventually to California, where his new pastor was told only that Lenczycki had been unjustly accused of abuse. It took authorities decades to catch up with the priest.

However, the most egregious example of Imesch's disregard for his parishioners was the case of the Rev. Gary Berthiaume. Berthiaume had served along with Imesch in the Archdiocese of Detroit, and the priest had been convicted of child sexual abuse and served time in prison. In 1987, after being exposed as a molester at yet another parish, Berthiaume asked Imesch to find him a place in Joliet.

Imesch installed the convicted sex offender at a west suburban hospital where Berthiaume worked as a chaplain. Berthiaume also began assisting at Masses, including children's Masses, at a nearby parish. The pastor there said he wasn't told of Berthiaume's past until well after the priest's appointment — and then only by Berthiaume himself.

The column I wrote when Imesch retired isn't online anymore, but I still have a copy and went looking for it this morning:

When Southtown columnist Tim Placher wrote movingly of his own victimization by one of Imesch's priests, the bishop's only response to this committed Catholic, cruelly wronged, was to play the victim himself.

“For 26 years, he never said anything," Imesch said. "It sounds like he wants to smear my name.”

It was a breathtaking display of ego and insensitivity.

His resignation now solves nothing, makes up for nothing.

The late Pope John Paul II should have demanded Imesch's mitre and ring four years ago.

He should not have been allowed to resign with dignity, chuckle his way through a genial press conference, and talk about his legacy.

He should have been fired, defrocked, and carted away in chains. 

He should have to travel from church to church, apologizing to the people who trusted him, the people who knelt every Sunday to hear his guidance, the people who worked far harder than he to attain goodness and appeal to God's mercy. 

For the sake of the faithful in the Joliet diocese, I hope the new bishop, J. Peter Sartain, can repair the damage Imesch did. The faithful of seven counties and the priests who are working hard to serve them deserve leadership that is honest, upright, and compassionate, befitting the church and the gospel that guides it.

They deserved better than Joseph Imesch gave them. 

I covered the trial of one molester priest, sat through days and days of testimony, victim after victim telling a slumped, orange-clad old man how he had betrayed their trust, ruined their lives. I watched as bishops' excuses turned to denial and anger, after people refused to take "whoops, so sorry" as an answer anymore. I listened as people who called themselves "Canon lawyers" like something out of The Tudors tried to argue that secular laws in the society in which the church operates do not apply, as though those same laws haven't protected the church for decades. The worse the allegations, the more insane the defense.

For that work, I was called a bad Catholic, a religious bigot, a meddling, interfering, unconscionably inconvenient reporter who was only interested in tearing down the sincere faith of others. The last refuge of a coward caught out in lies is to blame the press, always, and hey, it's an easy sell. Everybody hates reporters, right? Everybody hates nosy people who raise inconvenient questions.

And what I wanted to say, all along, was that the only reason I was doing this, the only reason anyone in Boston or Milwaukee or now New York was doing this, the only reason anyone would expose such pain and suffering to the light of day, to expose such an entrenched power structure with all the backlash that comes with it, was for the sake of people like those in church with me this morning.

But the pains which he endured, Alleluia!

Our salvation have procured; Alleluia!

Now above the sky he’s king, Alleluia!

Where the angels ever sing. Alleluia!

When the stories out of Boston broke, they weren't the first tales of priests abusing children but they were the first to connect the abusers to the people who protected them, and to detail the lengths to which the church went to shield them from the law. That was the difference, what made this a scandal. That it went all the way to the top, was obvious; that no one could do anything, was obvious; that someone as canny as Joseph Ratzinger could be so clumsy and arrogant about this is the only part of any of recent events that surprises me even remotely. 

Literally every defense made in the past two weeks, including the anti-Semitism argument, the reporters-are-assholes argument, the it's-all-years-ago-this-is-how-we-used-to-treat-all-pedophiles argument, rings as hollow now as it did years ago. Liberal priests aren't the problem. Gay priests aren't the problem. The secular society isn't the problem. The press isn't the problem. The victims aren't the problem. 

The bishops are the problem, and always have been.

I left the Church before the stories out of Boston broke, over something else, something different yet the same. Over being lied to. I came back out of grief and loyalty, and have stayed after three months because we collect food for the hungry and pray for victims of racial and gender discrimination, even in our own church. We work instead of moralizing. There is a network of good, of (yes, Glenn Beck) social justice that is an act of defiance in this selfish world and that is what these arrogant bastards in Rome are risking when they spin their little lies, when they foment hate and division instead of unity and love.

That's not an argument Bill Donohue is making but it is the only one Catholics should be making to those in the larger Church: We are the reason you are here. We put pennies in a bucket to build your buildings all over this country. We run your schools and care for your widows and your orphans and feed your hungry and clothe your naked and visit your sick, we do all this while you sit in an office and help criminals and cowards diminish us all. The work you ruin isn't yours, or even God's. It's ours.

And so instead of defending you, we are angrier than anyone else. Instead of excusing you, we say, we deserved better. Instead of helping to shield you by mocking journalists or blaming gays or bemoaning the exposure of child rapists as harshing our spiritual buzz, we're first in line to demand: Resign. Subject yourselves to the rule of the laws in the countries in which you live. Repent, as you so often are telling us to do for offenses like eating meat on Friday. Live by the rules of the God you claim to represent, and we'll just have to see if you ever earn back any of our respect. I don't think it's likely, but hey. Miracles happen. 

In the meantime, we'll keep bringing bags of food to the altar, bread among the hyacinths, and carry on the work of your God while you cover yourselves in shame.

Sing we to our God above, Alleluia!

Praise eternal as his love; Alleluia!

Praise him, all you heavenly host, Alleluia!

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Alleluia!

Father watched the kids scampering after candy this morning and commented, "It smells good, like chocolate in here." He came around the side of the pew, patted my shoulder, and said, "Happy Easter."

A.

Good Friday

I’m filing this missive from the middle of the north woods of Wisconsin. Since my folks were on vacation in the Caribbean and The Missus has never had a strong attachment to Easter as a holiday, we gladly accepted an invitation to head up to my in-laws’ place. Before we got here, the Classic landed in the shop and is likely to run about $4,000 in unanticipated repairs, the Midget came down with strep throat and I almost ran over a possum at 11 p.m. We’re going to call this a fair trip, in that we’re all alive but let’s not oversell anything at this point.

When I was a kid, Good Friday was a bit of a tradition for us. Mom would have off so we’d get up early and race around doing our errands. Most of those errands pertained to making Easter baskets, so we’d get the special kind of plastic grass and some of the exceptionally expensive chocolate eggs from the Boston Store. We’d grab fish sandwiches at McDonald’s or Burger King and then race home to be inside by noon. From noon to 3 p.m., we were silent, as was the tradition. That was the time in which Jesus was to have been nailed to the cross, suffered and died. I’d quietly color eggs while Mom would iron clothes. The next day, we’d be on a plane for somewhere fun, like Arizona or Mexico. It was a chance to get some warmth on us and to break up what was becoming an interminable school year for Mom and me. Once 3 p.m. hit, we’d head over to both grandmothers’ houses and drop off the baskets, dark chocolate candy for Mom’s mom, milk chocolate for Dad’s mom.

On rare occasion, we’d break the trend. My best friend when I was a kid didn’t have to stay inside, as it wasn’t part of his faith. One year, it was about 85 degrees and the kids were all outside playing. Mom kept me in until about 2 p.m., and then she let me out to play. She said she couldn’t imagine God giving us in Wisconsin such a beautiful day and then forcing us to not enjoy it. Another year, Dad had been grousing about his old car’s look, so Mom let me outside to wash and wax it. When Dad got home, the car looked so different he asked who was visiting us. Mom explained it was OK that I did this, as service to another was just as important as quietly reflecting. But don’t turn on the radio in the garage while you’re working.

Mom raised me to follow a lot of the traditions of the church. We gave up something for Lent, we didn’t eat meat on Friday and so forth. Still, she had a healthy respect for the underlying value of what these things were supposed to mean as opposed to worrying about the letter of the law. The sacrifice was supposed to make you think about yourself and how you approached certain things in your life. Instead of pissing and moaning that you couldn’t eat sweets or that you gave up watching TV, you were supposed to think about what you got to eat instead or how you’d better use that time to do something of value. That didn’t make me any less pissed off when the Missus watched me have a massive brain fart and eat some mashed potatoes and gravy last Friday, knowing I was screwing up. Still…

I’ve come to view this time of year a lot like I view education. I’ve got kids who are obsessed with grades and getting extra credit after they screw up and who are doing the “I’ve never got less than an A in anything” thing. Those folks, to me, represent what I don’t want education to be and what I sure as hell don’t want my faith to be: a series of check boxes that are used to measure how cool they are in a particular arena. I’ve also got kids who after failing something tell me, “I don’t care about this grade. I want to know what I did wrong and how to get better at this.” Those kids are fewer and much further between, but I’d do anything for them. They want to learn for learning’s sake and because they want to get better at something that matters to them. I wish more people in my faith were like this: discovering something about themselves through rituals they practice in order to better themselves.

Sure, you don’t need faith for that, but I’ve found it to be helpful and if I’m going to be part of a faith-based system, that’s what I want to get out of it as opposed to memorizing the stand-sit-kneel machinations and calling it good.

Doc

Passover

In the White House.

A.

Fairy Tale Logic

Poetry for your morning:

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:
Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe
That you have something impossible up your sleeve,
The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,
An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,
The will to do whatever must be done:
Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.

-- A.E. STALLINGS

A.

Love Wins

Thy neighbor, apparently, can suck it:

According to teachers at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School, a meeting was held Tuesday to discuss the issue. The staff was told a student would not be allowed to re-enroll because of his or her parents' sexual orientation. The staff members were also told not to talk to the media.

In a statement sent to 9NEWS, the Archdiocese said, "Homosexual couples living together as a couple are in disaccord with Catholic teaching."

According to the Archdiocese, parents who enroll their kids at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School are expected to follow the Catholic Church's beliefs.

"No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parents subscribe to the school's philosophy and agree to abide by the educational policies and regulations of the school and Archdiocese," the statement said.

Because this student's parents are homosexual, the Archdiocese says they were in clear violation of the school's policy.

Questions unanswered by the Archdiocese of Denver regarding the parents in its schools: What about all the parents using condoms or birth control pills? Shouldn't their kids get shoved out the doors too? What about divorced parents who've not gotten their previous marriages annulled? What about parents who fornicate? What about parents who steal? What about parents who forget it's Friday one time and order spaghetti with meatballs? What about parents who don't got to confession? Here's a doozy: What about children conceived through IVF, are they unwelcome in the Roman Catholic church?

I'd like to see that one enforced. That would be more fun than a truckload of kittens.

This is all so goddamn depressing. The Catholic Church has decided, after years of not really making that much of an issue out of homosexuality beyond some low-level "love the sinner" horseshit and some pretty fierce ignoring of the obvious, to begin fighting a civil goddamn war over this. It's been roiling beneath the surface for years but now? Now it's ON, bitches. Now we're gonna deny homeless kids an adoptive family so the gays don't get a child, deny everybody health benefits because somebody might have a gay spouse, and wank on endlessly that our internal Canon laws — which by the way no matter how much they may wish it so are not binding on the secular society in which we live — are being threatened by the very American tolerance that for years protected its immigrant churchgoers from the kind of religious persecution that burned England down. Talk about ungrateful, by the way.

This is the fight they're picking, and they are going to cause hurt to untold thousands, foment hate among millions, probably fuck up a few more presidential elections and the senate and local school boards or whatever, drive away what few younger folks haven't already split in disgust, and then they're going to lose. They're going to lose in the long run. I don't know if they can see it, but everybody around them can. They're going to lose, because this kind of bigotry is always so stupid, because love is scarily persistent. All you need to know about the future, you can see in the eyes of those loving couples who got their licenses in DC this week. All you need to know about the future, you can see in this sign:

Love wins. You can't beat that, and it's stupid to try. You can't stop that and you can't kill it and you can't deny it, it will fucking own you in the end, always, always. I know it feels to a lot of people who are fighting this fight that Prop 8 and the other backwards-ass laws passed recently and now this latest Catholic bullshit are signs that the fight is going badly, and I know it's easy for me to say it's not. I'm married to the person I love and have no cause to fear I'll be unmarried from him against my will. It is easy for me to say. But. Look at that. Love wins. It might take forever, we might not ever live to see it, but can you say it's untrue? Love fucking wins.

So what the Catholic Church is doing would be funny if it wasn't so sad and horrible and ordinary: They're going to run aground on this, and all the good they might have done in the meantime will be lost because they could not see past this. This is what they've deemed worthy of burning down an entire network of compassion built over centuries in this country. They'll destroy themselves to explicitly deny what they claim a nice carpenter fellow got up from the dead to tell them, precisely, exactly. What they say he was talking about with his entire life.

Which is: Love wins.

A.

Our Fate is Your Fate

Go read Megan.

This post isn’t about the ideas of Christianity. Every religion celebrates times of abundance and times of solemnity. Yom Kippur, Ramadan. They talk of repentance, of turning away from our past and our sins.

For me, this year, this season is more about turning toward than turning away. Turning toward other people and embracing their pain, rather than ignoring it. It is a difficult discipline. But our true wealth, says Wendell, comes when we recognize that while one of us suffers, we all suffer. While our brothers and sisters live in poverty, we do too.

Until that guy on the corner has a bed and a shower, neither do I.

I've begun thinking about religion again. Mostly because I made a deal.

Why else become a Catholic again at the absolute most miserable time to do so? Why else successfully resist the spiritual booty call of Christmas joy only to succumb in January? I hate Lent. I've always hated Lent. It's dark, it's cold, it's damp, it's miserable, and then you go INSIDE the church. The relentless focus on death and guilt and the crushing burden of being worthy of someone else's sacrifice, and the natural presumption that you aren't because who could be?

Then you go home to give up chocolate or in my case booze (I know, but I probably needed to give it a rest anyway), and really, April cannot get here fast enough. Somebody wake up that rabbit and get his cotton-tailed ass on the bunny trail. I can't wait three days to roll back the rock. It snowed another half a foot last night and it's all turning to slush today. I'm permanently tired. This is the time of year I forget and start to wonder if we're going to make it out of winter alive. Maybe this time the earth will just stop turning.

I made a deal, because when someone you love is dying that's what you do. You make deals. You make white-knuckled deals with the beyond to get you through the hour between three and four o'clock in the morning, and when the sun comes up you try to live up to them. Sometime in mid-November my regular conversations with whatever deity exists took the form of "I swear to you, you asshole, you stop her suffering and I will do whatever, and I mean WHATEVER." Whatever, and don't bother to lecture me about how it's all in my head because the crazy thing thing is I'm fully aware, seems to have taken the form of signing up for my local parish. And every Saturday night vowing to get my ass out of bed for the early service, and every Sunday barely managing to make it to mid-morning Slacker Mass on time.

The last time someone this close died I cut all my hair off. I go there, in no small part, to talk to her. She would find that blasphemous in the extreme and I'm aware of the humor in it. The church is old and the radiators make banging noises. I'm distracted by badly behaved children (jealous because I'd have been soundly smacked for clambering over pews and pushing my brother) and badly behaved adults. I remember most of the prayers but none of the songs are the same. It's not a bad parish, all things considered. Lots of emphasis on service, lots of discussion about challenging oneself to not be such a dick all the time, clothing and food drives, the stuff I like.

I am hoping, at present, that if I just keep behaving like this eventually it will make sense and I'll be able to be more articulate about it, particularly as it informs my politics (Told my mother once, "You're the one who dragged me to church with all that crap about the widow and the orphan, and guess what? It took."). For now, though? You breathe in and out, says a line I love from a movie I loathe, until it no longer hurts to breathe in and out. There's no real way of getting around it, Lent. God, I hate this time of year.

Robert:

Paul says this salvation is on your lips and in your heart. If it isn't in those places, where else would it be, and what good would it do you? And if it is in those places, what good is it if it doesn't make you act? If it doesn't lead you, drive you, compel you, to behave accordingly? What good is your salvation, if it doesn't make you feel safe? And if it makes you feel safe, why wouldn't you then do what's necessary?

You could go out into the wilderness, and not be afraid. You could go out to where God is most clearly seen, where there are no distractions, no confusion, no mistaking something else, some false idol, some human made object, for God. Where money is useless and the noise is from nature and the sights are God's handiwork. You could go out into the wilderness and not be afraid; if you felt safe.

The wilderness is not a place, of course; it's s state of mind. You could be in the wilderness right now, sitting before your computer, reading these words. You could be safe right now, but in the wilderness tomorrow morning, when the work week starts again. What salvation do you have there, in the place where you don't feel safe? What good is your salvation, if there is a place where you don't feel safe?

Is safety justice? It can be. "A wandering Aramean was my father," but God brought the ancestors of Israel to a place of safety, and then told them to take care of the aliens among them. They were safe because God had made them safe, and that meant they had to remember the lessons of justice, and where their safety came from, and why they should not be afraid, even of the aliens who lived with them, the ones who were not children of Abraham. They weren't better than those aliens; God didn't despise those aliens; there was no reason for the children of Abraham not to feel safe. Because the word of God was as near to them as their lips and their hearts.

A.