September 8 - Updated

A couple thousand some-odd years ago, Our Lady was born on September 8.
In 1664, New Amsterdam became New York on September 8.
Galveston, Texas was destroyed by a hurricane on September 8, 1900.
Huey Long was shot in the Louisiana State Capitol on September 8, 1935.
The Italian surrender in World War II was announced on September 8, 1943.
I was born on September 8, 1969.
My brother Michael was born on September 8, 1970.
Nixon was pardoned by President Ford on September 8, 1974.
Oprah went National on September 8, 1986.
UPDATE - On this day, in a year it's impolite to mention, Mary Ambuul, matriarch of the massivest, coolest Catholic family in the U.S. was born.
In the year of my birth, this was the number one song:

Coincidence?
Some of these things are better than others.
I'll be at a conference for a few days, so blog and tweets will be light.

Don Bosco Relics Arrive in U.S. this Week

St. John Bosco is to Italians from San Francisco what St. Patrick is to Irish everywhere – the main show in the galaxy of saints. I grew up surrounded by pictures, calendars, trinkets and even a second class relic of dubious authenticity of the saint, due to my grandfather’s great devotion to Don Bosco gleaned from the Salesians at Sts. Peter and Paul Church in San Francisco. My son later picked up this devotion from his first two years of school spent at Sts. Peter and Paul – he gets a mention every night at family prayers.

Sts. Peter and Paul was the first establishment of the Salesians of Don Bosco in the United States, so it is appropriate that the church will be the first in the U.S. to receive the saint’s relics on their 100 nation tour marking the 200th anniversary of Don Bosco’s birth. Details below are provided by my friend Gibbons Cooney, who will no doubt have coverage of the arrival on the blog he runs with Salesian Father John Malloy (good Italian name that):

Relics of Saint John Bosco (Don Bosco)
Founder of the Salesian Order, “Father and Teacher of the Young”
to Arrive in San Francisco THIS SATURDAY September 11!

SAN FRANCISCO--On Saturday, September 11, at 11:30PM, the relics of Don Bosco will arrive at Saints Peter and Paul Church, 666 Filbert Street, in San Francisco. The relics, a portion of Don Bosco’s right arm bone encased in a 1,800 lb. reliquary, will be driven to San Francisco from Tijuana, Mexico, the most recent stop on a worldwide tour commemorating the 200th Anniversary of Don Bosco’s birth. The relics have already visited (among others) Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Mexico.

Don Bosco will be received at Saints Peter and Paul, the first Salesian presence in North America, by an honor guard including members of the SF Fire Department, the SF Police Department, the Knights of Malta, the Knights of Columbus, and the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher.  The Church will be open all of Saturday night, allowing veneration by the faithful.  On Sunday, September 12, there will be five Masses celebrated at Saints Peter and Paul, each emphasizing a particular aspect of Don Bosco’s ministry: as a Model of Service; as Apostle to the Young; as Missionary to the World; as Model of Holiness; as Faithful for the Kingdom.

Don Bosco founded the Salesians to minster to and serve at-risk young people orphaned and dispossessed by the industrial revolution. While not numerous in the United States, the Salesians serve an extremely important role in other countries, a fact attested to by the reception of the relics by governmental dignitaries, including the Presidents of Nicaragua and Honduras. News of the coming of the Saint has generated great enthusiasm, particularly among the Latino population of the Bay Area. The Catholic Church recognizes Don Bosco as Patron of young people, Mexican young people, boys, schoolchildren, students, apprentices, laborers, stage magicians, and editors.

The relevance of the Salesian mission to today’s world is underscored by its amazing rate of growth.  Although only founded in 1859, the order is now the third largest men’s order in the worldwide Church, with over 20,000 members serving in 130 countries.  The Salesian Sisters (Daughters of Mary Help of Christians) are the second largest order of women religious, with 14,000 members serving in 89 countries. Notable contemporary Salesians include Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State; Bishop Carlos F. X. Belo, recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in bringing peace to East Timor; and Sister Enrica Rosanna, FMA, under-secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the most senior post ever held by a woman in the Vatican.

Catholic News Service has more information, including this list of other stops for the relics in the U.S. and Canada:

-- Sept. 11-13, San Francisco.
-- Sept. 14, Richmond, Berkeley and Watsonville, Calif.
-- Sept. 15, Watsonville and Los Angeles.
-- Sept. 16, Los Angeles and Rosemead, Calif.
-- Sept. 17-18, Bellflower, Calif.
-- Sept. 19-20, Harvey, La.
-- Sept. 21, Westwego, La.
-- Sept. 21-22, Harvey, La.
-- Sept. 22-23, St. Petersburg, Fla.
-- Sept. 24-25, Belle Glade, Fla.
-- Sept. 25-26, Miami.
-- Sept. 26-29, Washington, D.C.
-- Sept. 30, Stony Point, N.Y.
-- Oct. 1-2, New York City.
-- Oct. 4-6, Toronto.
-- Oct. 6-8, Montreal.
-- Oct. 8-10, Surrey, British Columbia.

Alas, not Kansas City.

Visit the official Worldwide Relic Pilgrimage page for more info on Don Bosco, his relics and the tour.

Statement on Groundbreaking of Nuclear Weapons Plant

Various Missouri dignitaries will gather September 8 in south Kansas City to break ground on a new campus for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The facility will manufacture parts for nuclear weapons. Following is a statement by Kansas City – St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn on the project:

Statement on the Groundbreaking of the Nuclear Weapons Plant

By Most Rev. Robert W. Finn

On September 8, 2010 ground will be broken to begin construction of a new facility for the production of non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons in South Kansas City. In the Catholic Church September 8^th is the feast of the Birth of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The confluence of the groundbreaking with the feast of Mary’s nativity provides the opportunity to pause at the irony of the situation: Mary, mother of the Prince of Peace, and the construction of a facility whose main purpose is the construction of weapons for warfare.

The Catholic tradition has always affirmed the right of a state to defend itself from unjust aggression. Implicit in that right is the need to equip a trained military force. We do not deny this obligation and necessity on the part of any state.

However, the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction – which this nuclear plant proposes to construct – constitutes a grave moral danger. Nuclear weapons are by their very nature weapons of mass destruction: their force and impact cannot be contained, and their use affects combatants and non-combatants alike. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and humanity, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation. A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons – especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons – to use them” (CCC #2314; cf. also Gaudium et Spes #80). Since the use of such weapons is morally questionable, it follows that the production of such weapons is also morally questionable.

Others would argue that to possess such weapons would be a deterrent to other nations who also possess such weapons. The Church responds to such an objection: “The accumulation of arms strikes many as a paradoxically suitable way of deterring potential adversaries from war. They see it as the most effective means of ensuring peace among nations. This method of deterrence gives rise to strong moral reservations. The arms race does not ensure peace. Far from eliminating the causes of war, it risks aggravating them. Spending enormous sums to produce ever new types of weapons impedes efforts to aid needy populations; it thwarts the development of peoples. Over-armament multiplies reasons for conflict and increases the danger of escalation” (CCC #2325; cf. also Pope Paul VI Populorum Progressio #53).

We will continue to stress the Church’s constant call for disarmament: “The Church’s social teaching proposes the goal of ‘general, balanced, and controlled disarmament.’ The enormous increase in arms represents a grave threat to stability and peace. The principle of sufficiency, by virtue of which each state may possess only the means necessary for its legitimate defense, must be applied both by States that buy arms and by those that produce and furnish them. Any excessive stockpiling or indiscriminate trading in arms cannot be morally justified. Such phenomena must also be evaluated in light of international norms regarding the non-proliferation, production, trade and use of different types of arms. Arms can never be treated like other goods exchanged on international or domestic markets” (CSD #508; cf. also John Paul II Message to the United Nations 1985, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace paper “The International Arms Trade” 1994, John Paul II Address to the World of Work 1988).

We have an obligation to think responsibly concerning this nuclear weapons plant; to think beyond the local and examine the global dimensions of this project. “Arms of mass destruction – whether biological, chemical, or nuclear – represent a particularly serious threat. Those who possess them have an enormous responsibility before God and all of humanity. The principle of non-proliferation of nuclear arms, together with measures of nuclear disarmament and the prohibition of nuclear tests, are intimately interconnected objectives that must be met as soon as possible by means of effective controls at the international levels” (CSD #509, cf. also Gaudium et Spes #80; CCC #2314, John Paul II World Day of Peace #2 1986). Let us make a decision for all of humanity: that one day this facility may be transformed from a producer of weapons into a producer of goods that benefit all mankind. We look forward to the day when Isaiah the prophet declared, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” (Isaiah 2: 4)

Is Catholics in Alliance Kaput?

This blog has had at least a dozen posts on the background and doings of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good over the last couple years, but this may be the last (let’s hope). It appears they are out of business. Let’s consider the evidence:

They’ve had no blog posts since June 10.

They’ve made no tweets since May 12.

They haven’t posted to their own facebook page since May 12.

Their calendar page is blank.

Their staff bio page is blank.

Their media guy, John Gehring, is now working for Faith in Public Life.

But why rely on circumstantial evidence? I decided to just give them a call. The phone number has been disconnected.

I’ve long asserted that CACG was a campaign organization and not a non-partisan advocate of Catholic Social Teaching as many news outfits have gullibly or willfully maintained. With the president elected and health care passed, it looks, for now, like the campaign is over.

A Model for Reforming CCHD

The U.S. Catholic bishops are set to receive a review board’s report on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development at their November meeting. The report may include recommendations for reform of the controversial program. The Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph has already implemented a reform of CCHD locally. A discussion of our reform is offered here as a possible model for the bishops’ deliberation. The author, Jude Huntz, is Director of our diocesan Human Rights Office.

A Model for Reforming CCHD

By Jude Huntz

In recent years the Catholic Campaign for Human Development has come under a great deal of scrutiny and criticism. CCHD had a relationship with the national organizing group ACORN that was problematic, and when a variety of problems were discovered with ACORN the national CCHD office took steps to defund the organization. Yet, the relationships with community organizing groups across the country have been the fundamental problem with many CCHD grants in all parts of the country. Many have called on bishops to cease their support of the collection entirely, and some bishops have chosen that path for a variety of reasons. Others have called for a reform of CCHD, and in response to those requests the U.S. Bishops established a review board last fall to examine all aspects of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. This November the bishops will receive a report from this committee and recommendations will be made on the future of the campaign.

While we pray for the work of this review board and await the outcomes, it may be fruitful to look at one possible model of reform that we have established in the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. This model was established last year after a thorough review of the history of CCHD in our diocese and careful reflection on current funding decisions by the Human Rights Office of the diocese, the office charged with oversight of CCHD by Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn. In addition, Bishop Finn met with his fellow bishops in November to hear their experiences and to obtain their advice. What follows is the result of these two processes.

I. The Negative Decision

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development offers two possible national grant opportunities: community organizing grants and economic development grants. In studying the various problems with CCHD grants nationally, we noticed that the problematic grants all fell under the community organizing area. These organizations have traditionally attempted to create a voice for populations that have historically had no voice in the political and economic decisions of society. This goal is laudable in itself, but as time progressed the nature of organizing evolved. Many organizing groups began to develop a partisan edge to their work. What is more, many organizing groups began to advocate for causes that are contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, most notably in the areas of abortion, same sex marriage, and health care reform.

Our first decision, then, was to cease funding all community organizing projects in our diocese and not to grant such requests in the future. While the diocese still supports the concept of providing a voice to those who lack a voice in our society, we believe that there are a variety of mechanisms to achieve such a goal that can take place without funding community organizing groups that offer positions contrary to Church teaching. In the Church’s political advocacy work, we believe in the following principle: no permanent enemies, no permanent allies. Funding community organizing groups gives the impression that we are permanent allies when in fact we are not. We welcome alliances with such groups on particular issues, and we recognize that we will have to be on opposing sides on other issues. The decision not to fund community organizing groups enables the Church to maintain her autonomy while respecting the autonomy of these groups as well.

The Church will continue to advocate for the voiceless in our society, and we will do so using our diocesan offices, state Catholic Conferences, and the work of the laity. It is not necessary to outsource our advocacy work to organizations that may not agree with our principles in all areas of Catholic Social Teaching.

II. The Positive Decision

Our focus for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, then, is in the area of economic development. In our experience, we have found that economic development is an effective tool in combating poverty and in developing authentic community throughout the diocese. This focus enables the diocese to promote a fundamental principle of Catholic Social Teaching – the importance of and the right to work. The surest way to overcoming poverty is providing jobs for people, and the economic development grants of CCHD have provided us the opportunity in our diocese to help organizations develop jobs for people so that people can help themselves.

In our review of CCHD grants nationally and locally we discovered that in all the controversy around CCHD grants, no grants to economic development organizations were problematic in any way. We also discovered that these projects were highly successful in the work they do in providing jobs for people living on the margins of society. Furthermore, our diocese has had a great deal of success in the area of economic development grants to various organizations. We have seen first hand businesses and jobs created through this work, and it led to the discovery that people need and want to have a job more than they need and want to be organized into the work of agitation.

III. The Outcomes

This year of grant funding represents the first year of our new model for CCHD in our diocese. Our diocese chose to recommend national grant awards to two organizations – the Kansas City Urban Youth Center, and Northwest Missouri Enterprise Facilitation.

KCUYC provides after school programs for urban youth who live in the poorest apartment complexes in our city. These programs include tutoring, athletics, community gardening, and organizational skills. This work enables young people to be successful in school and life, providing the surest way for a group of people to break the cycle of poverty in which they find themselves.

NWMEF began as a project of the diocesan Human Rights Office and became its own non-profit several years ago. This organization provides low income people with business mentoring so those who want to start their own business can do so, and others who want to expand their business can receive the help they need to do so successfully. This work takes place in rural counties of Northwest Missouri where the program has created a great number of jobs. The success of this work is being recognized by the State of Missouri, which would like to expand the model to other rural communities across the state.

The diocese also selected four organizations to fund with local CCHD money that comes from our share of the national collection as well as a private endowed trust we have for such local diocesan grants. The organizations are as follows:

1. Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty: This organization works for the abolition of the death penalty in Missouri and advocates for restorative justice programs in our prisons. Restorative justice programs seek to rehabilitate offenders and help them to become productive members of society again.

2. Amethyst Place: This facility is a residential and treatment center for single mothers overcoming drug and alcohol dependence. The families can live at Amethyst Place for up to two years. Mothers receive treatment for their addiction, job training, and counseling. The children attend school and receive free medical care.

3. Troostwood Youth Gardens: This organization operates a community garden in one of poorest neighborhoods of Kansas City. Volunteers recruit and train young people to plant and develop the garden, market the sale of the fruits and vegetables grown there, and be responsible for the reinvestment of proceeds into the garden project. The program has taught young people valuable skills of self-reliance, providing them a path out of the cycle of poverty.

4. Seton Center: The Seton Center is a Catholic social service agency that provides a food pantry, clothing pantry, free dental clinic, an alternative high school for troubled youth, senior citizen programs, and a community action network for the neighborhood association. The work of the high school provides an educational path for troubled young people which helps enable them to escape the cycle of poverty.

There are many other worthy organizations in our diocese deserving of such funds, and we hope to help them in future years with our CCHD funding model.

The reform of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is a goal to which our diocese is committed. We believe that we have demonstrated that not only is reform possible, but that it is happening here in the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. Our hope is that our model will provide the national office and other dioceses a framework for the work of CCHD across the country

Divine Mercy and the Death Penalty

When the US Conference of Catholic Bishops launches Respect Life Month in October, one of the seven major articles made available in their Respect Life Program will concern the Church’s teaching on the Death Penalty. The article titled, “Divine Mercy and the death penalty,” is by Kansas City – St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn and is posted in full below:

Divine Mercy and the death penalty

By Most Rev. Robert W. Finn

“The greater the misery of a soul, the greater its right to My mercy. . . . On the cross, the fountain of My mercy was opened wide by the lance for all souls—no one have I excluded!” (Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul, p.1182)

“Help us O God of our salvation; . . . according to thy great power, preserve those doomed to die!” (Psalm 79:9, 11)

In January of 1999, Pope John Paul II made a pastoral visit to St. Louis. When he met with Governor Mel Carnahan of Missouri, the Holy Father asked him to commute the death sentence of Darrell Mease, who was scheduled to be executed in the next weeks. Carnahan granted the Pope’s wish, saying he was moved by the Pope’s appeal for mercy.

The Pope did not request a reevaluation of the merits of the condemned man’s case. Rather, he presented a simple and straightforward petition for mercy. The sentence was changed from death by lethal injection to life imprisonment without parole. The common good of society remained protected from the perpetrator. Justice was not confounded, but a higher purpose was served in putting aside the irreversible remedy of death.

The Church’s stance on capital punishment has always been based on the responsibility to protect society. St. Thomas Aquinas says that the legitimate civil authority is obliged to defend people from a dangerous criminal. At the same time, he cautions, “The execution of the wicked is forbidden wherever . . . the wicked are not clearly distinguished from the good.” (Summa Contra Gentiles V., Book III, c.146). Besides reminding us of well-known cases where innocent people were condemned to die, this should remind us that as Christians we are urged not to see anyone as irredeemably wicked.

An alternative to the death penalty

Prior to his intervention in St. Louis, Pope John Paul had laid out his case for the limitation of the use of the death penalty in his encyclical The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae) (1995) and in his extraordinary 1997 modification of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). He still allowed for the application of the death penalty as a just choice that authority may make in its responsibility to safeguard society from the unjust aggressor. Yet the revised text goes on to say: “Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm—without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.’”

The sworn responsibility of authority to secure the common good is not easily laid aside. But here the Church, convinced that society can be protected without executing dangerous criminals, charges us to look to a less violent, less final remedy. The Catechism directs us to a solution that preserves the common good without definitively curtailing the individual good of the perpetrator, offering him the opportunity for redemption. Each man, no matter how sinful and flawed, has a final purpose and call to salvation, one that we ought not too easily or unnecessarily preempt.

The above is the “ought” for laying aside the death penalty: legitimate authority can fulfill its responsibility using lesser but sufficient means for protecting the common good. But we should add that the argument of Divine Mercy, while never violating justice, transcends the human “ought.”

Mercy surpasses justice and heals hurts

The correct dispensing of justice always seeks to provide something which is well suited to the person and the circumstance. Justice is giving each person his “due.” (CCC, no. 1807) When Jesus freely submitted to human “justice,” He provided by means of His Cross an act of justification that, because He was divine, satisfied all our sins.

God did not abolish justice. Rather, He intended by the offering of His Son to purge human justice of any sense of wrath or revenge. Time and again we see that violence begets violence in a seeming unending spiral. God told St. Faustina that “Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My mercy.” (Diary, p.300)

In the Divine Mercy, God receives and quenches human vengeance in Jesus’ own wounded Heart. In this Heart, which is an abyss of love, mercy overcomes hatred. Mercy brings healing that is impossible on a merely human level. Divine Mercy can restore hope, because it flows from the heart of the Risen Christ who, once and for all, has vanquished the finality of death. The deep truth that faith teaches is that only in the context of mercy -- God’s mercy and our own forgiveness and mercy -- can we, as wounded human men and women, find healing and hope. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Mt 5:7).

A prayer of reparation

The Chaplet of Divine Mercy, which God gave to the world through St. Faustina, is a beautiful prayer that has a powerful efficacy to repair the hurt wrought by sin. As we respond to God’s call to continuing conversion, the invocations of the Chaplet may be offered as a litany of reparation. With our hearts turned to the Father, we use the Chaplet to profess and invoke God’s mercy accomplished in Christ’s sorrowful Passion. We unite ourselves with the sacrifice of His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

When human efforts seem futile and human solutions leave us empty, we pray the Chaplet to beg for a new beginning: the healing of the damage done by our sins and those of others. Our plea for mercy will not fail to reach the Father.

Christ’s execution and the gift of Divine Mercy

The Church’s annual novena to the Divine Mercy begins on Good Friday, the day of the execution of Jesus. The hour of mercy is the hour of His saving sacrifice. This is when blood and water gushed out for our salvation. “On the cross, the fountain of My mercy was opened by the lance for all souls -- no one have I excluded.” (Diary, p.1182) This is the moment that shook the world and stirred the faith of the pagan centurion to say, “Truly, this was the Son of God.” (Mt 27:54)

As we seek a reason to put aside the practice of the death penalty, perhaps the best motive is our desire to imitate God in His mercy toward those for whom Jesus died. Mary, Mother of mercy, pray for us and teach us to show mercy to others.
    
Most Rev. Robert W. Finn has been bishop of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph (Missouri) since 2005. A former chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Task Force on the Life and Dignity of the Human Person, he is currently a consultant to the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities. The accompanying article is a component of the 2010-2011 Respect Life Program of the USCCB’s Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.

What Makes a Man Interesting

By Santiago Ramos

I had been spending too much time on YouTube, watching the newest Dos Equis beer ads featuring its famous “Most Interesting Man in the World.” (On “wingmen”: “It doesn’t take more than one person to talk to a woman.” On drink umbrellas: “Unless your drink is expecting rain, you should probably reconsider.”) Scrolling through the sidebar of related videos, I came across an interview with Jonathan Goldsmith, the actor who plays the world’s most interesting man, from the 2009 World Music Awards.

“If I watch this,” I told myself, “the Most Interesting Man in the World will become completely demystified. There is no way Jonathan Goldsmith is as interesting as his advertisement persona. I will no longer take as much pleasure in watching (and re-watching, and then watching again) these ads.”

The ads, in case you’ve missed them, feature a sophisticated, adventurous, bearded man, either sitting at a bar, surrounded by pretty girls, airing witty advice (as cited above), or performing adventurous exploits around the world (presenting gifts to queens, feeding endangered birds on dangerous mountain cliffs, playing cards with Mayans). At the end of every ad, the Most Interesting Man in the World says two things: “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis,” and, more importantly, “Stay thirsty, my friends.”

I decided to watch the interview. I was in a mood to slay idols, to do away with distractions. These ads held a seductive grip from temple to temple, across my forehead and over my eyes. I was spending too much time on them. So I watched the interview. But I got more than I bargained for.

Consider this exchange:

Goldsmith: I was sitting in a restaurant the other day and a fellow came over, he said, “You’re the guy.” “Yeah,” I said. He said: “I asked my seven year-old son yesterday, What do you want to do when you grow up? He said, I want to be the most interesting man in the world.” Made me feel good.

Fawning Lady Interviewer: How many kids say that?

Goldsmith: Well, a lot of people say that, not so many children. But he was seven. And the other day, an elderly man said, “Ohh, if I could do it all over again…” So it runs the gamut. It’s nice.

Fawning Lady Interviewer: Very nice.

He was demystified, yes. But I was horrified. I couldn’t get to sleep: I spent half the night staring at the ceiling, wondering about the poor old man who confided his regrets to Jonathan Goldsmith. How did Goldsmith respond? Most likely, whatever he said wasn’t very interesting. Yet the old man’s question is a gift for the rest of us who are smarter than Goldsmith: Assume the old man’s perspective, and wonder what life is about, even when most of it has already passed and it hasn’t been too interesting.

From the point of view of its intended audience—the young—the World’s Most Interesting Man is easily attractive. The world opens up to him as a direct function of his wonder and his courage. His only sacrifice seems to be a steady career, and he never seems to lack the affection of women (though we never find out if he has any children). His sophistication and savoir-faire (highlighted in the shorter “advice” commercials) is a different feature of his character altogether, which some people might find even more interesting. For the young who look forward, the Most Interesting Man in the World is a role model but also, more importantly, a prophet of possibility.

But for our old man, the case is different. Possibility doesn’t point backwards in time. The old man resigns himself to a wistful looking-back, and either he felt this sadness deeply or kept it at arm’s length. Perhaps he’s like the aging Ulysses in the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, who at the end of his long odyssey, wants to set sail once again: “Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will/ To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” In any case, talking to a not-so-interesting actor was of no help. The only help would be a new horizon of possibilities in life (which probably don’t include playing cards with Mayans or climbing jagged rocks), and a different understanding of experience as such.

I wonder if Jonathan Goldsmith himself realizes that his hair is getting white, too. The accumulated experiences of the World’s Most Interesting Man will one day end—and then what? He won’t want to do it “over again,” but he might want to “still do it.”

The most interesting thing in these ads, then, is not the adventures but the adventurer. The adventurer has an impulse for the world that is bigger than the world itself, and that crashes against the limits of the world. The old man, in this sense, is as interesting as the Most Interesting. But once we understand this, and we look out ourselves with awe (as Allan Bloom puts it), we need assurances that reality will respond—that there is a way to “stay thirsty” and “still do it.”

Santiago Ramos is a graduate of Rockhurst University in Kansas City and has written for First Things (online), Commonweal, The Pitch, Traces, Image Journal and various blogs. He is currently studying toward a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Boston College.

Cardinal DiNardo Urges House to Support ‘ No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act’

The chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Pro-life Secretariat has written today to all members of the House of Representatives urging them to support and co-sponsor H.R. 5939 by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ).

Smith’s bill actually goes farther than simply fixing the abortion provisions of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”. It permanently codifies the provisions of the Hyde Amendment for all federal government agencies and programs and ensures conscience protection as well. Current abortion funding restrictions are piecemeal, require annual re-authorization and have been subject to various interpretation by unelected officials and courts, the cardinal explains.

Cardinal DiNardo makes the excellent point, that a single statutory ban on federal funding of abortion would allow debate on important issues like health care and annual appropriations bills to be on the merits of the bills themselves, “instead of being endangered because ideologues favoring abortion want to use them to reverse or weaken longstanding federal policy on abortion funding.”

The full text of Cardinal DiNardo’s letter is below:

August 20, 2010

Dear Representative:

The “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” (H.R. 5939) was introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) at the end of July, and already has 166 co-sponsors including 20 Democratic members. I am writing to urge you to support and co-sponsor this important legislation if you have not yet done so.

H.R. 5939 will write into permanent law a policy on which there has been strong popular and congressional agreement for over 35 years: The federal government should not use taxpayers’ money to support and promote elective abortion. Even public officials who take a “pro-choice” stand on abortion, and courts that have insisted on the validity of a constitutional “right” to abortion, have agreed that the government can validly use its funding power to encourage childbirth over abortion.

So secure is this agreement, in fact, that some in the past have simply assumed that it is already fully implemented at all levels of the federal government. For example, some wrongly argued during the recent debate on health care reform that there was no need for restrictions on abortion funding in the new health legislation, because this matter had already been settled by the Hyde amendment. However, the Hyde amendment is only a rider to the annual Labor/HHS appropriations bill; and while it has been maintained essentially intact by Congress over the last 35 years, it only governs funds appropriated under that particular act.

In reality, federal funds are prevented now from funding abortion by riders to various annual appropriations bills as well as by provisions incorporated into specific authorizing legislation for the Department of Defense, Children’s Health Insurance Program, foreign assistance, and so on. On various occasions a gap or loophole has been discovered that does not seem to be addressed by this patchwork of provisions – as when unelected officials in past years were construing the Indian Health Service or the Medicare trust fund to allow funding of elective abortions, and Congress had to act to correct this grave situation. While Congress’s policy has been remarkably consistent for decades, implementation of that policy in practice has been piecemeal and sometimes sadly inadequate.

The absence of a government-wide law against federal funding of abortion has led most recently to the passage of major health care reform legislation that contains at least three different policies on federal funding of abortion – none of which is consistent with the Hyde amendment (now Sec. 508 of the Labor/HHS appropriations bill for the current fiscal year) or with similar longstanding provisions that govern all other health programs. For example, one provision of the final Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act technically complies with the first sentence of Hyde (against direct and traceable funding of abortion procedures themselves), but violates Hyde’s second sentence (against funding health plans that cover abortions) – and then violates the spirit of the entire amendment, by directly forcing conscientiously opposed citizens in many plans to fund other people’s abortions through their health premiums (sec. 1303). Another provision appropriates its own new funds outside the bounds of the Hyde amendment and allows those funds to be used for abortions or not, depending on a decision by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (sec. 1101). Yet another provision leaves out any reference to Hyde, and allows its new funding for community health centers to be governed by the underlying mandates in the authorizing legislation for these centers – mandates that in other health programs have been interpreted by the federal courts to require federal funding of abortion (Sec. 10503). These disparate policies are not compatible with the Hyde amendment, or even with one another. This is one reason why passage of a bill like H.R. 5939 is overdue.

The Catholic bishops of the United States strongly support legislation to correct these and other abortion-related problems in health care reform (H.R. 5111/S. 3723). But by implementing the policy of the Hyde amendment throughout the federal government once and for all, H.R. 5939 would prevent such problems and confusions in future legislation as well. Federal health legislation could be debated and supported in terms of its ability to promote the goal of universal health care, instead of being mired in debates about one lethal procedure that most Americans know is not truly “health care” at all. Annual appropriations bills could be discussed in terms of how their funding priorities best serve the common good, instead of being endangered because ideologues favoring abortion want to use them to reverse or weaken longstanding federal policy on abortion funding.

H.R. 5939 would also codify the Hyde/Weldon amendment that has been part of the section containing the Hyde amendment in annual Labor/HHS appropriations bills since 2004. Hyde/Weldon has ensured that federal agencies, and state and local governments receiving federal funds, do not discriminate against health care providers because they do not perform or provide abortions. It is long overdue for this policy, as well, to be given a more secure legislative status. No hospital, doctor or nurse should be forced to stop providing much-needed legitimate health care because they cannot in conscience participate in destroying a developing human life.

In short, I urge you to co-sponsor the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act and help ensure its enactment.

Sincerely,

Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo
Archbishop of Galveston/Houston
Chairman, Committee on Pro-Life Activities
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Prop 8 Judge’s Denial of Stay Order is Too Cute by Half

Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker today denied a motion to stay his ruling declaring Proposition 8 unconstitutional. His written justification for denying the motion provides ample evidence that Walker should have recused himself from the Prop 8 trial. In responding to the reasons Prop 8 proponents offered for a stay pending appeal, Walker shows himself to be merely willful and more than a little cutesy.

In addressing the argument that a stay is warranted given the proponents likelihood of success on appeal, Walker, astonishingly argues that the proponents likely don’t even have standing to appeal. Walker argues, “California does not grant proponents the authority or the responsibility to enforce Proposition 8.”

And here the cute begins. He argues that only the state has that authority:

In Lockyer v City & County of San Francisco, the California Supreme Court explained that the regulation of marriage in California is committed to state officials, so that the mayor of San Francisco had no authority to “take any action with regard to the process of issuing marriage licenses or registering marriage certificates.”

The right of citizens to defend a democratically enacted law in court is here rendered akin to Mayor Newsom’s unilateral and illegal decision to start issuing same-sex marriage permits, ie., both are illegitimate. Since only the state can regulate marriage, Walker argues, the only people with standing to challenge his ruling would be the governor or attorney general. Since neither of them are likely to do so, there is no likelihood of an appeal even progressing, Walker argues. So no stay.

This is really extraordinary – the implication being that if the people of a state pass a law that the governor doesn’t like, and a trial court (with an obviously biased judge) throws out the law, then the people have no right to appeal.

If that is not bad enough, Walker’s final argument should cause alarm to every American regardless of their position on Prop 8. Walker argues there is no “public interest” in a stay, despite the fact that the public very clearly expressed their interest at the ballot box. Here Walker explains the proponents’ position:

Proponents also point to the public interest as reflected in the votes of “the people of California” who do not want same-sex couples to marry, explaining that “[t]here is no basis for this Court to second-guess the people of California’s considered judgment of the public interest.”

His tyrannical response immediately follows:

The evidence at trial showed, however, that Proposition 8 harms the State of California.

So the people vote democratically that marriage is to be between one man and one woman. A partnered, gay judge decides that would be bad for the State of California. Therefore, the people of the State of California no longer have any business pursuing what they believe is in their interest. The judge has decided what their interest is.

Walker then backs this up citing the aforementioned support of Governor Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Brown for same-sex marriage, as if this also defines the interest of the people of California, notwithstanding their clear vote to the contrary.

Walker’s full ruling is here. I’ll be following what actual legal minds have to say about it over the next few days. Certainly the 9th Circuit will review it before it goes into effect August 18. But my first impression is that Walker’s stay ruling is even more pernicious than his vain original ruling.

Marian Days 2010 – Day 1

Marian Days 2010 had its official kick-off declared by Springfield – Cape Girardeau Bishop James V. Johnston at a 7:00 p.m. outdoor Mass last night attended by tens of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics from throughout the U.S. and Canada. But the Vietnamese who travel to Carthage, Missouri each year in thanks to and in honor of Our Lady had clearly already been there for a while.

In fact, the 130 mile drive down south on 71 highway from Kansas City was not what I’d expected. I’d driven through another mass gathering in an isolated location before – the annual Harley rally in Sturgis, South Dakota – and you could see it coming for three states. But here, I approached Carthage on a virtually empty highway, and even along route 571 into town, there was no traffic and no Vietnamese to be seen walking along the streets.

I was beginning to worry this year’s event would be a flop. It wasn’t until I turned a corner onto the campus of the Dòng Đồng Công religious order (Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix) that I saw the massive camp city of Vietnamese Catholics. Every single inch of the massive grass areas around the main buildings of the campus that wasn’t being used for an official function had a tent on it. While Marian Days doubles or triples (and more) the 13,000 population of Carthage each year, the impact is very compact, in and around the home of this religious order.

Of course, many prefer not to rough it and stay in hotels. I booked late, so I’m staying in Joplin, 15 miles away, and even here the guests are mostly Vietnamese.

So on to some pics:

At the entrance

Accomodations

Inside Assumption Hall, people stop to pray at the statues of various saints, each with their own neon halo.

The real reason I’m here – food. Making fresh rice wrappers here.

Thang Tran served me up my first and very excellent bowl of phở đặc biệt. He’s raising money to build a bigger church for his growing parish on Oklahoma City. The children pictured are helping out, but aren’t his. Thang just got married three weeks ago.

Sister M. Julianna of the Holy Family of Nazareth is selling foor to raise money to build a new church for her 1,200 family parish in Arlington, Texas. They currently worship in a converted Food Lion. Sister Julianna is the DRE.

Entrance Procession for Opening Day Mass.

A similar number of priests and sisters flanked the other side of the altar at the opening Mass. I counted about 160 concelebrants.

Bishop James V. Johnston

Bringing up the gifts.

More pics and posts to follow.

The Magnitude of Missouri's Rebuke

On the front page of Drudge this morning, the lead item blares in all-cap red "BLOW TO O: MO SAYS NO". But here in Missouri, you'd be hard pressed to find the tiny bullet point "Missouri sets up challenge to federal health care law" on the Kansas City Star's homepage. It gets less billing than their promo for the "Hottest people, places and trends" feature in Ink magazine. So is Missouri's rebuke to Obamacare a big deal or not?

Let's look at the numbers. Proposition C, which rejects the Constitutionally questionable federal health care insurance mandate, garnered 71.1 percent of the vote last night.

- The 667,680 people who voted for Prop. C outnumbered the combined number of people who voted for the winners of both the Democratic and Republican Senate primary races.

- The number of people who voted in the Prop. C contest outnumbered the total number of people voting for all Senate primary candidates.

- The number of people voting for Prop. C outnumbered the total number of people voting for all Republican candidates for Senate, meaning that despite a lopsided Republican turnout, support for Prop. C was thoroughly bi-partisan.

- Even assuming the unlikely occurrence that 100 percent of the Republican turnout voted in favor of Prop. C, that means that at the very minimum, 25 percent of Democrats also supported the measure.

All this despite the fact that:

- Only $115,000 was spent by proponents of Prop. C, while the Missouri Hospital Association spent $300,000 to defeat it, according to the Missouri Record whose editor managed the Yes on C campaign.

- There was a near news blackout on the very existence of the initiative.

- Annectdotally speaking, I never saw a single Yes or No on Prop. C sign and didn't receive a single communication from either campaign, despite being a 100 percent turnout household.

- The only other major statewide race was the Senate primary to select candidates to replace Kit Bond and the result was a foregone conclusion for both parties. Robin Carnahan took 84 percent of the Democrat vote and Roy Blunt took 71 percent of the Republican vote.

- Even the Catholic bishops of Missouri who'd taken strong stands against aspects of Obamacare, took a neutral position on Prop. C - preferring to spend their energies on attempts to exclude abortion from the scheme.

So, with little publicity and virtually no prodding, 7 out of 10 Missourians who voted yesterday sent an unmistakable rebuke to Obamacare. You can call that symbolic. You can say the federal courts will overturn it anyhow. And you might be right on both counts. But politicians who dismiss it are gonna have a heck of a time in November.

Spoof - Dos Equis 'Most Interesting Man in the World'

Someone linked this hilarious video on twitter a few days ago. I can't believe by the view count it doesn't seem to have gone viral yet. Enjoy:

The Challenge of Praying to Saint Ignatius

Were I back in San Francisco, I’d be lighting a candle here today, in front of this statue of St. Ignatius in the church of his name where I’ve lit more candles than in any other place.

Ignatius, and a few of his modern companions, were my shuttle back into the Church after very turbulent late teen years. Today on his feast and forever, I will be grateful to him and the men in his company who have meant so much to me, and to most of my closest friends, who made similar journeys under their tutelage at the University of San Francisco.

It’s hard to pray for the intercession of St. Ignatius though, because you always know what he’s thinking and demanding:

Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess.

Thou hast given all to me. To Thee, O lord, I return it. All is Thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and thy grace, for this is sufficient for me.

Well it’s not enough for me and a request for His love and His grace is usually not the sole content my prayers of petition. But asking St. Ignatius to intercede for what you want has the great benefit of reminding the pray-er of what he needs – the grace and love of God. Sometimes that’s not the comfort you want at the moment.

There is another prayer, sometimes falsely attributed to St. Ignatius, which was nonetheless central to his spirituality:

Soul of Christ, sanctify me
Body of Christ, save me
Blood of Christ, inebriate me
Water from Christ's side, wash me
Passion of Christ, strengthen me
O good Jesus, hear me
Within Thy wounds hide me
Suffer me not to be separated from Thee
From the malicious enemy defend me
In the hour of my death call me
And bid me come unto Thee
That I may praise Thee with Thy saints
and with Thy angels
Forever and ever

It’s a prayer that for me powerfully evokes the desire for His love and His grace and it makes what Amy Welborn (and others I’m sure) has called Ignatius’ Radical Prayer more credible – if no less challenging.

St. Ignatius, Pray for us.

Bishop Finn in the War on Porn

Tom Hoopes has an interesting article at OSV on efforts by the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Arlington to get folks off porn. The impetus to do something was from priests frustrated that viewing porn is “the No. 1 sin they are hearing from men in the confessional.”

Alarmed by the constant mentions of pornography by penitents, priests were clamoring for training. “It was no longer enough to say, ‘You’ve made a great confession. Pray and do better,’” . . .

Go read the article to see the concrete ways the two dioceses are dealing with the problem.

One interesting fact the article conveys, and a reason I’m noting it here, is that both dioceses have sought to '”incorporate the wisdom” of Bishop Finn’s 2007 pastoral “Blessed are the Pure in Heart” into their programs. The article says the pastoral:

does not just condemn use of pornography, but reaches out to those who use porn and lists ways for them to become reconciled with the Church. . .

. . .Bishop Finn writes: “While some would say that the opposite of love is hate, [Pope John Paul II] taught that the opposite of love is use. The idea is that if you do not love someone, you will end up using that person.”

This gets to the heart of why pornography is wrong, he wrote. On the one hand, “One may never use another person as an object for one’s own pleasure.” And ultimately, wrote the bishop, “the only proper response to a person is love.”

While the number of men repeatedly confessing this sin is surely a problem, the number of men not confessing it is probably much worse. If you’re dealing with the issue, or have a family member or friend who is, I’d highly recommend taking a look at Bishop Finn’s pastoral. It is also available in Spanish and French.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh's Irony Challenged Moment

So this week, the National Catholic Reporter runs an editorial reflecting on the challenges U.S. women religious face in light of the Apostolic Visitation and a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Opines the NCR:

The social sciences have a term for the situation of women who feel compelled to be compliant with the men who are bent on demeaning and humiliating them: They call it battered wife syndrome.

If there are battered wives, there have to be wife beaters, and in this instance, the wife beaters would have to be His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI who appointed the Apostolic Visitation, Cardinal Franc Rode whose office is undertaking it and Cardinal William Levada who ordered the doctrinal assessment.

Levada’s investigation is further called a “shameful betrayal of trust,” the Apostolic Visitation described as “a setup” and “The Vatican” is accused of “hypocrisy” and “duplicity”.

In another NCR article this week viciously attacking the entire Vatican and the very Apostolic structure of the Church, Eugene Cullen Kennedy compares the Holy Father to Philippe Petain, Head of State in Vichy France.

Those two articles are only just a taste of a whole smorgasbord of attacks and snide accusations against the whole leadership and traditions of the Catholic Church that can be found this week – or any other week – at NCR.

Enter USCCB Director of Media Relations Sister Mary Ann Walsh. She is asked a question at NCR by Michael Sean Winters:

What does the Shirley Sherrod episode tell us about race and politics and the media in the age of Obama?

And Sister Mary Ann rightly thinks that Sherrod was subjected to “reckless accusations and shoot-from-the-hip responses from leaders you’d think would know better.”

Then she continues:

In recent days, new journalistic hit squads have emerged on the U.S. scene, even in the church. Where once only a few church newspapers engaged in character assassination, today these attacks seem ubiquitous.

And when she says ”where passionate self-righteousness, minus basic journalistic fairness, runs amok,” I’m loving it, cause I can see she’s getting ready to hit NCR right between the eyes. Here it comes:

Many such groups claim the word “orthodox” for themselves. They dismiss those who do not agree with them or their approach as “unorthodox.” People of a different opinion or approach are accused of setting up a “parallel magesterium.” These are serious condemnations in a church which holds fidelity to its teachings as paramount. Despite the fact that theology and canon law are matters of careful analyses, these groups bring the subtlety of a meat cleaver to church discussions.

Take that NCR!

Ummm, wait a minute?

The Disenchantment of Christopher Hitchens

From the upcoming edition of The Catholic Key:

Hitch-22: A Memoir
Christopher Hitchens
Twelve
448 pp./$26.99

Review by Santiago Ramos

If you haven’t read his monthly features in Vanity Fair, you may have read his monthly book reviews in the Atlantic. If you haven’t read his weekly column on Slate.com (“Fighting Words”), you’ve probably seen him on Fox News or MSNBC, attacking anyone from Jerry Falwell to Michael Moore, or promoting his best-selling anti-religious jeremiad, God is Not Great. Christopher Hitchens is ubiquitous because everyone wants him. He can be everywhere because he is quite versatile: a writer and a speaker, a critic and a journalist. But why does everyone want him?

If nothing else, Hitchens’ new memoir, Hitch-22, helps us to answer that question. In it, Hitchens regales his audience with tales of student protests in Oxford, philosophical debates in Havana, and revolutions in Portugal and Poland. The book also contains accounts of his friendships with the literary men of his milieu: Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, and James Fenton, among others. The book is peppered with epigrams (too many) from English poets and Marxist revolutionaries. Hitchens is not as complete or profound a writer as Chesterton, Waugh, Orwell, or Greene, but he certainly falls within the English tradition of literary journalism. Everyone wants him on TV because he is twice as intelligent as any of our predictable, one-dimensional talking heads; everyone wants him in print because his prose has verve and lucidity. Everyone wants him - liberals and conservatives - because he is interesting.

But because so much has already been said about what makes Hitchens interesting, and because, thanks to this memoir, it is so easy to verify for one’s self that this is so, I’d like to spend this review pointing out the one way in which Hitchens has become less interesting in the second half of his life: his loss of faith. Not his faith in God - in his memoir, Hitchens says that he probably never had much of a faith in God to begin with - but his faith in Marxism. Not (as the pundits would have it) his supposed switch from “leftist” to “neocon,” but rather his much more dramatic, and underappreciated, transformation from being a revolutionary to just another voter like the rest of us.

In his memoir, Hitchens writes about his early days at Oxford: learning about Marxist thought, protesting against racism and imperialism, and getting arrested for the cause of revolution. In a way virtually inconceivable to young Americans today, Hitchens was so devoted to his faith in the coming Workers’ Paradise that he stopped worrying about his resumé. Recollecting his thoughts from those days, Hitchens writes: “Did I really think that my examinations in logic and philosophy didn’t matter much, because a revolution was in progress or at least in prospect? I did.”

Hitchens’ politics have probably become saner since he dropped Trotsky as a role model. Let’s bracket that question for now, so we can admire the quaint notion of a man who believes in a certain cosmological worldview which begins with the suffering of the workers’ struggle, and ends with the redemption of revolution and the promise of paradise. Karl Marx was not a prophet, at least not one who heard voices from on high; he claimed, rather, to hear the voice of History, calling from the future, explaining to him its logic and its inevitable conclusion. (In reality, Marx was hearing the voice of another philosopher, G. W. F. Hegel, but that’s for another day.) Hitchens actually believed in this cosmological view, romantic and fatal as it was, and he devoted his early life to it.

But what does he believe in now? In the meandering final chapter of his memoir, “Decline, Mutation, or Metamorphosis?”, Hitchens considers what he lost when he stopped being a Marxist:

I suspect that the hardest thing for the idealist to surrender is the teleological, or the sense that there is some feasible, lovelier future that can be brought nearer by exertions in the present, and for which “sacrifices” are justified. With some part of myself, I still “feel,” but no longer really think, that humanity would be the poorer without this fantastically potent illusion.

Hitchens goes on to say that, in his life, he has seen prisons opened, dictators toppled, countries liberated. There has been no shortage of just causes and victories. But something is lost - something almost palpable - when the world loses its big-picture story, when it becomes disenchanted. History degenerates into a series of episodes when it was once a comedy. For a literary man like Hitchens, this is surely a loss. The loss is not merely of political ideals - we can always have those, because we will always crave justice. What Hitchens lost is a comprehensive view of life that gave it meaning and beauty - a religion.

If these memoirs are useful, they are insofar as they kindle a desire in its readers - religious or irreligious - to crave enchantment, to not settle for a mundane view of life. One wonders, too, whether Hitchens will one day rebel against his own disenchantment.

Santiago Ramos is a graduate of Rockhurst University in Kansas City and has written for First Things (online), Commonweal, The Pitch, Traces, Image Journal and various blogs. He is currently studying toward a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Boston College.

Home Again

A lot of blogs will make helpful posts alerting regular readers that the blogger is going on vacation. Not here. Before we left a couple of weeks ago to see my wife’s folks in Seattle and mine in San Francisco, Mrs. Smith made me promise not to mention on the blog or twitter that we’d be gone. She figures such an announcement is an open invitation to rob your house.

In Mrs. Smith’s defense, our house was broken into a couple of days before we left. Thanks to the over-the-top diligence of the Kansas City Police Department, the perp was caught and all items returned the same day. Thank you KCPD!

So apologies if you’ve bothered to check in here and especially to all my new twitter followers who signed up in response to many kind #FFs on the day I left. I’ll be feeding both outlets regularly again.

Two vacation pics:

When we arrived in Seattle, we stayed a night at the Edgewater hotel near the ferry since we were leaving the next morning to meet-up with my in-laws on San Juan Island. Ever eager to self-parody, the above is what you find in a Seattle hotel room instead of the Gideon bible. The sink in the bathroom also came with a sign explaining that it was a “vessel” and not a sink and not to expect it to drain well, because it didn’t a drain vent. The politically-correct reason for such was not explained. I think these are two details I would not have noticed if I hadn’t been living in the sanity of fly-over land for the last three years.

And speaking of fly-over:

That’s the view of Gas Works Park in Seattle from the window of the 1950s era, six-seater sea-plane we took back from San Juan Island. Moments later we landed right in the middle of Lake Union. That was a highlight, and it was wonderful to see friends and family. But it’s good to be home again in Kansas City.

World Cup Final Post

Santiago Ramos sends in some final thoughts on the World Cup following up on his earlier post of June 15, “The World Cup Preserves Something that America is Losing”:

For those readers of the Catholic Key who may have missed it, here is the goal that decided the World Cup Final, scored by Iniesta, of Spain:

Mind you, this goal came after 115 minutes of play—that is, 90 minutes of regulation time, and 25 of extra time. Before that the score was nil-nil, 0-0. To say that one needed patience to endure this final match understates the case—the game was tight and the defensive on Holland’s part; the relentless passing and build-up on the part of the Spanish midfielders did not create many clear opportunities for a goal in the second half. The Spanish tactic favored creativity and movement, but it couldn’t overcome the violent cynicism of the Dutch. To be fair, the Dutch team didn’t completely sit back to defend and wait for a counterattack, but they did set a decidedly violent tone to the match (Video removed by FIFA).

In other words, the game was a lot like real life.

A few weeks ago, I wrote in this space: “The World Cup this year has its own set of stories which will congeal into the dramatic.” Scandalously, I did not even mention Spain in my subsequent list of stories. But now we can all say that the drama of the final congealed into an allegory: that of good versus evil, of the team which played beautifully and creatively and then defeated the team which played negatively, neglecting its own talents, trying to grind out a win by dint of blunt force. The Spanish team broke with the conventional wisdom which pits practicality against elegance, pragmatism against beauty: the Spaniards were cool and they won. If only they could have scored more goals.

Some good links:

Alan Jacobs (of First Things fame) has a list of dramatic World Cup moments.

My friend Elliott has a nice reflection on the end of the Cup.

Legendary Dutch player Johan Cruyff slams his own National Team for playing ugly.

The Logic of Toy Happiness - Toy Story 3

From the upcoming edition of The Catholic Key:

Both Happy and Sad

By Santiago Ramos

Toy Story 3
DIR Lee Unkrich SCR Michael Arndt
Starring the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, et al.

Restless is my heart until it rests in thee: such is the prayer of every toy. And when a toy rests - in the arms of a child - it doesn’t truly rest: it plays, and is played with. There are only three elements to toy happiness: presence, play and permanence. The child must be there; he must play with the toys periodically; he must promise never to abandon them. If he does abandon them (or threatens to, or appears to), then we have a story.

The first scene of Toy Story 3 is a flashback of sorts, because it begins with a fast-action imaginative play-session featuring Woody (the cowboy), Buzz Lightyear (the astronaut/laser-wielding superhero from the future), Jessie (the cowgirl), and Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead (the most realistic, happily-married couple Disney has produced in twenty years). The play-session is orchestrated by the toys’ owner, Andy. With this scene, we have the quintessential picture of toy happiness. But the story quickly jumps forward in time to a present where Andy is 17 and getting ready to leave for college - and here the story begins. The toys are neglected and haven’t been played with for years. Rumors circulate that they are headed for the trash; Woody, ever faithful to Andy, insists that they are actually headed for the attic. Yet though the attic is better than the trash bin, neither alternative is what a toy actually wants.

With the exception of Woody, who lands a place in the box marked “COLLEGE,” Andy chooses to store all of his toys in the attic. But first he places them in a white trash bag, and this creates confusion for all the toys except Woody, who believe they are being taken to the natural destination of all trash bags, the dump. It also creates confusion for Andy’s mother, who finds the trash bag on the ground and actually believes that it actually is meant for the dump. And so Woody must first rescue his friends from the dump, and then convince them that that’s not where Andy meant for them to go.

The toys end up neither in college nor the trash bin. They make their way back to Andy’s mom’s minivan and into another box which is headed towards a daycare called “Sunnyside.” All of the toys, except Woody, believe Andy to have betrayed them, and wish to start a new life at Sunnyside. Woody, on the other hand, eternally loyal to Andy, wants everyone to follow him in a quest to return to Andy’s house before Andy himself leaves his house for college. But Woody isn’t able to convince the other toys that Andy didn’t actually betray them. The toys instead run into an unexpected reversal at the daycare, which is not as happy a place as its name would indicate. It is a dystopia of toys; it perverts (without negating) all three elements of toy happiness.

To write more about the plot after this point would spoil too much. But there is enough here to explore the movie’s interesting logic of toy happiness. Such happiness depends upon a relationship between the owner and his toys. But the owner is not an owner in the same way that a slave-owner is an owner, and the toys are not “owned” as slaves are “owned.” The toys always remain free, but they cannot act freely for their happiness without an owner who plays with them and loves them. Their owner is something of a cross between a father (or mother) and a friend, and he loves and is loved in return. The relationship is necessary for the fulfillment of the toys.

If you think we are getting too philosophical for a Pixar movie, you’re only half-right. We are getting more philosophical than we need to be, but not more philosophical than the movie’s plot will allow. This is what’s great about the movie: it doesn’t dumb the world down, it merely covers only the parts of the world which children understand, and leaves them with an open view of what is next to explore. Andy will inevitably go to college. While the toys may get a new owner, Andy sets aside the toys of his youth, and will attempt to enter adulthood. The Pixar creators allow a small tinge of nostalgia and sadness to appear on Andy’s face: Must we grow up? Why?

These questions are the threshold between the end of Toy Story 3 and the beginning of another story, Andy’s. They are a source of restlessness; Andy is something like a toy himself, and he will be searching, like the toys, for presence, play, and permanence. But now we have truly ventured beyond the scope of Pixar. These are questions for high art-for films, not movies. It’s enough for Toy Story 3 to be a story that is adventurous and not completely superficial, with an ending that is both happy and sad.

Santiago Ramos is a graduate of Rockhurst University in Kansas City and has written for First Things (online), Commonweal, The Pitch, Traces, Image Journal and various blogs. He is currently studying toward a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Boston College.

Unclaimed Veterans Buried with Honors in Missouri

From the upcoming edition of The Catholic Key:

By Kevin Kelly
Catholic Key Associate Editor

HIGGINSVILLE — At long last, they are at rest.

With full military honors, the cremated remains of 16 veterans and two wives were interred July 1 at the Higginsville State Veterans Cemetery years, and in most cases decades, after their deaths.

The remains had gone unclaimed and stored at Mt. Moriah South Cemetery in Kansas City until passage of a bill last year in the Missouri General Assembly allowed a veterans’ organization to claim them if no family could be found.

“They are veterans,” said Vernon Scott, commander of Veterans’ of Foreign Wars Joel E. Balcolm Post 1738 in Independence. “It doesn’t make any difference what branch of the service. This is what we do. We help veterans.”

The VFW post and American Legion Post 189 in Lee’s Summit claimed the remains of the veterans under provisions of the new Missouri law so that they could finally be given a proper burial.

And it took months of research through documents to determine that the veterans did indeed qualify for a burial with honors, said Rich Carroll of McGilley-Sheil Funeral Home.

Nearly as soon as the legislation was signed by Gov. Jay Nixon last year, McGilley-Sheil assigned staff to pore over death certificates and other documentation to determine if any of the hundreds of unclaimed cremated remains the funeral home had stored were those of military veterans, and thus eligible for burial in a network of five new military cemeteries under the control of the Missouri Veterans Commission.

The 16 veterans identified for the July 1 service are only the beginning, Carroll said. The national Dignity Memorial network is working with the Missing in America Project to identify unclaimed remains of other veterans eligible for military burial, and those numbers could easily reached into the thousands nationally and into the hundreds in the Kansas City area alone.

In addition to the research, McGilley-Sheil also made the arrangements for the burial service without charge.

Carroll said nearly nothing is known about the 16 veterans who, until July 1, were forgotten.

“Their stories are as varied as the individuals themselves,” he said. “Possibly, they had no children or other family to claim them. Or it may have been a financial burden. But it is the right thing to do to find these folks and get this done.”

Carroll also knew who to contact to preside at the service. Father David Holloway, pastor of St. Bernadette Parish in Kansas City and a Navy veteran with 21 years of active duty service as both an enlisted man and a chaplain, was more than willing.

“I feel a connection, even though I don’t know any of them,” Father Holloway told The Catholic Key. “It is important, especially in our church, to be the spokesman for all who are forgotten. Just because a person died without family doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a family in the church.”

In his brief homily, Father Holloway said he had presided before at military funerals, “but none quite like this.”

“We are grateful for those who served, and for those who continue to serve,” he said.

“They are not forgotten. They are appreciated. They are finally cared for and honored for what they did,” Father Holloway said.

“We did not know them, but what they did continues to shape our country,” he said. “We place our hope in a God who never gives up on us, and we gather to be an expression of God’s love for those who may not have found much love in their lives.”

Missouri National Guard Brig. Gen. Larry D. Kay, who is executive director of the Missouri Veterans Commission, also bestowed state combat medals on 14 of the 16 veterans for their service in wars ranging from World War I to Vietnam.

Like the burials, the medals were also long overdue, he told The Catholic Key. He also expressed the hope that the Higginsville service was just the first in a long line of burial services for once-forgotten veterans.

“This is a debt we owe these veterans, and a debt we can repay,” he said.

“It is our honor and privilege to care for them as they cared for others,” Kay said. “We want to get the word out that we are ready to give a resting place with dignity and honor to these veterans.”

A special military honors unit from Warrensburg, in full dress uniform and under the command of Army First Sgt. (retired) Carla Caldwell, provided the bugler playing taps, the 21-gun salute, and the presentation of the flag, accepted by Higginsville State Veterans Cemetery director Jess Rasmussen in lieu of family.

The crowd that jammed into the cemetery’s small chapel included VFW members, American Legion members, members of the Patriot Guard who provided a motorcycle escort for the hearse bearing the remains from Kansas City, and three special guests.

Charlotte Myers-Dick, Diana Pitts and Jennifer Jackman came as Gold Star mothers who have recently lost sons in military service.

Army Specialist Eddie Myers was killed July 27, 2005, by a pipe bomb in Samarra, Iraq. Army Cpl. David Unger, Pitts’s son, was killed Oct. 17, 2006, also by a pipe bomb, in Baghdad. Marine Lt. Ryan Jackman was killed in an automobile accident as he was returning to Camp Pendleton, just weeks before his deployment to Iraq.

The death of their sons, Jackman said, gave them a link to all who sacrificed for their country.

“One of our (Gold Star Mothers) founding principles is that our sons and daughters are best remembered by our loving current veterans,” Jackman said. “We find comfort that we can go forward by serving others.”

It didn’t matter whether or not they knew the forgotten 16 veterans and their spouses interred that day, said Pitts.

“They were someone’s sons, and now they have become our sons,” she said.

The veterans, with their dates of military service, and spouses who were finally laid to rest are:

- Gervis J. Adney, private, U.S. Army, 1917-19. Adney was awarded the Missouri medal for service in World War I. He died April 28, 1989.

- Mary Adney, spouse of Gervis Adney, date of death unknown.

- Jacinto Ordaz Briones, seaman first class, U. S. Navy, 1943-44. He died Nov. 2, 1998.

- Ralph H. Cruse, technician fifth class, U.S. Army, 1942-45. Cruse was awarded the Missouri medal for service in World War II. He died Jan. 30, 1995.

- Dorothy M. Cruse, wife of Ralph Cruse, who died Feb. 10, 2000.

- Thomas James Head, master sergeant, U.S. Army Air Force and U.S. Air Force, 1942-66. Head was awarded three Missouri medals for service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He died April 1, 2008.

- Harold P. Lederman, lieutenant, U.S. Army, 1917-1919. Lederman was awarded the Missouri medal for service in World War I. He died Jan. 23, 1964.

- Edward Herman Lewenight, private, U.S. Marine Corps, 1918-19, and private, U.S. Army, 1943. Lewenight was awarded two Missouri medals for service in World War I and World War II. He died March 23, 1984.

- William W. Miller, private, U.S. Army, 1942-43. Miller was awarded the Missouri medal for service in World War II. He died March 7, 1990.

- Clifford C. Neuse, private, U.S. Army, 1942-43. Neuse was awarded the Missouri medal for service in World War II. He died Nov. 20, 1986.

- James W. Peer, private, U.S. Army, 1943-46. Peer was awarded the Missouri medal for service in World War II. He died March 4, 1989.

- Verne Lyle Pickens, seaman second class, U.S. Navy, 1918-21. Pickens was awarded the Missouri medal for service in World War I. He died Nov. 25, 1993.

- Alfred F. Scholz, lieutenant colonel, U.S. Air Force, 1961-81. Scholz was awarded the Missouri medal for service in Vietnam. He died Nov. 28, 1994.

- Thomas E. Singleton, eletrician’s mate petty officer second class, U.S. Navy, 1950-54. Singleton was awarded the Missouri medal for service in Korea. He died April 14, 1988.

- Russell D. Stanford, private, U.S. Army, 1976. He died June 28, 1998.

- Earl W. Swesey, corporal, U.S. Army, 1944-46. Swesey was awarded the Missouri medal for service in World War II. He died Dec. 13, 1987.

- David R. Woodhead, lieutenant commander, U.S. Navy, 1966-68. Woodhead was awarded the Missouri medal for service in Vietnam. He died Sept. 7, 1993.

NCR Seriously Misleads on Stem Cell Research

Bill Tammeus has written a column over at NCR titled “It’s easy to be misled on stem cell research,” and he proves the point pretty well himself. It’s hard to tell though whether he’s misled or intending to mislead. At any rate, certainly his editors know he’s factually incorrect.

Tammeus is a Presbyterian who is concerned that the Catholic church has an imprecise understanding of Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) or cloning as it is known throughout the entire world except for the Greater Kansas City media market. This imprecise understanding has led to an unjustified moral condemnation of SCNT by the Catholic church, according to Tammeus. So he endeavors to explain the science for us poorly informed Catholics. This is so bad, I have to go line by line.

Tammeus explains that SCNT produces something he calls “early stem cells”. These are cells “which unfortunately, imprecisely and thus misleadingly are usually called embryonic stem cells,” he says. Let’s consult the National Institutes of Health stem cell information center:

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)—A technique that combines an enucleated egg and the nucleus of a somatic cell to make an embryo.

Strike one.

Tammeus again:

I've been writing about stem cell research for much of the last decade, so I know that research using adult stem cells has been going on for more than 50 years. By contrast, the first report of early human stem cells produced by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) was not published until 2004.

That study would be "Evidence of a pluripotent human embryonic stem cell line derived from a cloned blastocyst" by Woo Suk Hwang, et. al. Notice that the scientist does not think it imprecise or misleading to use the term “embryonic stem cells” to describe what he’s working on, nor does he flinch from saying such cells were derived from a cloned (SCNT) blastocyst, i.e., a “preimplantation embryo of about 150 cells,” again as defined by the National Institutes of Health’s stem cell page.

But now the irony of Tammeus’ referencing this study gets even deeper. That study and a subsequent study in which Hwang claimed to have derived stem cell lines from cloned blastocysts were both retracted by Science magazine and Hwang was dismissed from Seoul National University. Reviews of his work found that Hwang had not in fact derived any stem cell lines from cloned blastocysts.

Tammeus continues following immediately on the last quote:

So it's not surprising that some effective therapies that use adult stem cells exist while many therapies using early SCNT stem cells still are in development.

Let’s look at the words “some” and “many” – because the words to substitute if Tammeus’ quote were to be factual are “many” and “zero”. There are more than 70 treatments and therapies for diseases derived from adult stem cell research. There are absolutely ZERO therapies or treatments in development using stem cells derived from SCNT. That’s because to date there have been no stem cells lines derived from human SCNT for anybody to be working on.

Furthermore, SCNT for therapeutic purposes has been virtually abandoned as a research model because of newer discoveries like Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells which are derived from somatic cells without the need for an egg.

I could go on and on through the rest of Tammeus’ piece. Bill Tammeus is a fine writer in his field and I’ve enjoyed his work at the Kansas City Star over the years, but he doesn’t know the first thing about the science he’s trying to explain to us poor Catholics here.

The science of embryonic stem cell research is something that is extremely distorted specifically in the minds of Kansas Citians because of the political manipulation of the Stowers Institute of Medical Research which needed to create that confusion in order to get Missourians to allow them to try therapeutic cloning. It’s pretty clear Tammeus got his misinformation from them as he even quotes their CEO.

I think it’s fair for him and many other Kansas Citians to be confused. What’s not fair is for the National Catholic Reporter’s editors to give space for what they certainly know is false information.

Quote of the Day - Archbishop Wenski

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski has some choice quotes today on CHA and "Obamacare". Explaining the bishops' position, he tells Catholic News Agency:

"we weren't willing to go for health care reform under (just) any conditions. Basically we have said that health care reform means that it should be accessible to everybody and nobody should be killed. And this Obamacare does not make it accessible to everybody and it allows for people to be killed, mainly unborn children at the taxpayer's expense."

See the whole story including the Archbishop's comments on CHA over at CNA.