Pope Francis: We Have Not Done "Everything the Holy Spirit Was Asking" at Vatican II

An article posted this morning in the National Catholic Reporter by publisher Thomas C. Fox says Vatican Radio reports that in a homily today at the communal residence where he lives, Pope Francis called the Second Vatican Council "a beautiful work of the Holy Spirit."  Francis lamented that fifty years after Vatican II, some Catholics were still resisting implementing it.

This, of course, is music to the ears of progressive Catholics around the globe.

The NCR article follows:

Pope Francis on Tuesday offered his most explicit support in his young papacy to the work of the Second Vatican Council, saying it was "a beautiful work of the Holy Spirit." He made his remarks in a homily at a Mass celebrated at the Santa Marta residence inside the Vatican.

He criticized those who resist change and "wish to turn back the clock" and "to tame the Holy Spirit," asking if, 50 years after the council, "we have we done everything the Holy Spirit was asking us to do during the Council?"

The answer is "no," Francis said, according to a Vatican radio report.

"We celebrate this anniversary, we put up a monument but we don't want it to upset us. We don't want to change and what's more there are those who wish to turn the clock back." This, he went on, "is called stubbornness and wanting to tame the Holy Spirit."

Francis' homily was centered on the theme of the Holy Spirit and our resistance to it. It took its inspiration from the first reading of the day, which was the story of the martyrdom of St. Stephen who described his accusers as stubborn people who were always resisting the Holy Spirit.

He said: "The Holy Spirit upsets us because it moves us, it makes us walk, it pushes the church forward." He said it's wrong to try to tame the Spirit, adding, "the Holy Spirit is the strength of God, it's what gives us the strength to go forward, but many find this upsetting and prefer the comfort of the familiar."

Nowadays, he went on, "everybody seems happy about the presence of the Holy Spirit but it's not really the case and there is still that temptation to resist it."

He concluded his homily by urging we not resist the pull of the Holy Spirit. "Submit to the Holy Spirit," he said, "which comes from within us and makes go forward along the path of holiness."

What If God Were...Just a Stranger on the Bus, Trying to Find His Way Home?

In this 2008 photo, Argentina's Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, second from left, travels on the subway in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Bergoglio, was known for taking the subway and mingling with the poor of Buenos Aires while archbishop. (Pablo Leguizamon/Associated Press)

It has been thirty days since Jorge Bergoglio was elected pope on March 13, 2013.  And thirty days since he stunned everyone by announcing he would be called Pope Francis.

Not only the first to be so named in the history of Roman Catholicism, but also the first to say that his name was inspired by St. Francis of Assisi and the saint's lifelong commitment to the poor, the marginalized and the innate sanctity of all God's creatures.

And for thirty days, I have held my breath -- and my tongue! -- hoping ... against hope ... that the most promising new pope since John XXIII would not disappoint, would actually turn out to be the genuine breath of fresh air that the church has needed desperately, for too many decades.

After railing for years against the relentless reversal of Vatican II -- by Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI -- I think it's time for me to say that the election of Pope Francis has good chance of being an achievement that I never expected the current College of Cardinals to deliver:  it opens up opportunities for the Catholic church that I feared I would not see in my lifetime.

As I watched TV in the moments leading up to Bergoglio's election, I thought to myself, half-joking, that the seagull perched stubbornly atop the Sistine Chapel smokestack might mean that the Holy Spirit was watching over the proceedings inside.  Maybe that thought wasn't as whimsical as it seemed.

Of course, the story of Pope Francis will be whether he can capitalize on those opportunities and bring them to fruition.  But the first thirty days have been an impressive beginning -- impressive enough that I dare to hope for more.

The most moving first impression was on the balcony, right after Francis was introduced to the waiting world.  When he asked the crowd in St. Peter's square to bless him, before he would bless them, I dissolved into tears.  It was exactly the right thing for him to do -- and a telling departure from the self-important, imperial papacies of the last fifty years.

And the hits just kept on coming.  His insistence on not lording it over his fellow cardinals.  His refusal of elaborate liturgical brocade for his first papal blessing.  Paying his own bill at the place he lodged during the conclave.  Declining, so far at least, to live in the elaborate papal apartment or use the papal limo or ride in the bulletproof popemobile.  Insisting that he be able to touch actual human beings physically, even if it causes his security staff conniptions.

The simple attire for the first papal blessing was only the beginning of a liturgical modesty and warmth that contrasted sharply from the pomp of his predecessors -- and from the totalitarian worship of rubrics that they tried to impose on Catholic churches everywhere.  Might we actually be witnessing a return to the style of worship that Vatican II proclaimed as the baptismal birthright of every Christian?

This Franciscan style of liturgizing reached its most poignant expression to date on Holy Thursday, when the new pope washed the feet of two young women (leaving the rubricists aghast) and a Muslim (leaving the ecclesial traditionalists aghast).  If Pope Francis keeps this up, he may well repeal the suppression of liturgy begun by John Paul II and pursued to extreme by Benedict XVI.

As several commentators remind us, it is way too soon to know if Francis will recontextualize any of the rigid dogmatism that has characterized the Roman church in the decades since Vatican II.  As archbishop of Buenos Aires, he reportedly preached the narrow moral strictures that his predecessors declared official church positions.  So progress in any of those areas would be a pleasant surprise.

But on at least one controversial topic, Pope Francis does promise to be his own man:  in contrast to the last two popes, who condemned Latin American liberation theology, he appears to be a fan of it and of its preferential option for the poor.  If that continues through his papacy, the quest for justice and equality will at least set the church on a much better path than it's been on for a long time.  And that has the potential to at least diminish the preponderance of narrow moral strictures in what the church preaches to the world.

Given what we have learned about Bergoglio in Argentina, along with his choice of the name Francis, we have reason to hope that a commitment to the poor, the ordinary, the marginalized are at the core of who Pope Francis is.

Among the many stories and images of Jorge Bergoglio in the years before he was elected as Pope Francis, few are as enduring and endearing as his penchant for mingling with the poor, which included hanging out in slums and getting around Buenos Aires using its public transit system.

I don't know where the photo above first appeared, but it was featured in coverage of Bergolio shortly after the College of Cardinals elected him -- suggesting it was one of the things they found so attractive about him.

I notice something about the photo that apparently no one else has: What is striking about it is how much the scene was anticipated by the lyrics of "One of Us," a song released by singer Joan Osborne in 1995.  (A version is available on You Tube.)  Some of the lyrics bear an uncanny relationship to this part of Pope Francis's history:

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

The point is not, let me hasten to say, that Pope Francis (then or now) should be considered "God...on the bus."

It is, rather, that one of the ways Bergoglio has experienced God's presence most intensely was by sharing space with the strangers on the buses and subways of Buenos Aires.  Doing that was his quiet but poignant way of personifying and proclaiming the message of Jesus, "Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me."

That clearly is a central tenet of liberation theology -- a teaching that the church needs to hear and take to heart on every continent.  If Francis succeeds in taking that spirit global, he will have moved the Catholic church in the direction of St. Francis of Assisi more than any pope before.

If Francis prevails in that, the result may not be precisely the church that Vatican II envisioned.  But it will embody a significant part of that vision.  And a church that goes there will be more open to the present and to God's lure into the future -- and less likely to worship what it was in the past.

Let's just say that this is my personal prayer for Pope Francis.  And from what I have seen and heard over the last thirty days, I'm sure I'm not alone.  That's a very rewarding feeling.  For fifty years we have wandered in a desert made by derelict, deficient popes.  It would be so refreshing to see the church back on fertile ground.

One final irony about the lyrics to "One of Us."  The last verse reads:

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
Just trying to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to heaven all alone
Just trying to make his way home
Nobody calling on the phone
'cept for the pope maybe in Rome

If things go well with Pope Francis, God will not be lonely up in heaven, waiting for the pope to phone from Rome.  Because God will find new companions on every bus and every subway and in every gathering of human beings.  Because those who gather will realize that God is in them and with them and among them.  And "Thy kingdom come" will be not just a prayer, but a lived experience.

Georgetown Senior Fellow Says American Catholics Should Consider Resigning Too

A non-Catholic friend in the San Francisco Bay area, who knows my passion for getting Rome to end its treason toward Vatican II, alerted me to an excellent op-ed piece posted yesterday in the New York Times.

Paul Elie, a senior fellow in Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, suggests that if Pope Benedict XVI could resign from the papacy, U.S. Catholics who still go to church should consider resigning from their pews for at least one Sunday -- or maybe even several Sundays.

I think it's an excellent proposal.  And I also share Elie's conviction that "change in the church can happen, even dramatically" (italics mine).

But if the moribund College of Cardinals follows its track record since the death of Pope John XXIII and elects yet another pope hell-bent on reversing the Second Vatican Council, the resignation from Catholic pews should last at least as long as that papacy.

Here's Paul Elie's op-ed:

AT 8 p.m. last night in Vatican City, Benedict XVI resigned the papacy. Now American Catholics should consider resigning too.

The conventional wisdom has it that Benedict’s resignation sharply reduced the aura of the papal office, showed a tender realism about old age, and made clear that even ancient Catholic practices could be changed. That is all true, but the event’s significance is more visceral than that. It has caught the mood of the church, especially in North America.

Resignation: that’s what American Catholics are feeling about our faith. We are resigned to the fact that so much in the Roman Catholic Church is broken and won’t be fixed anytime soon.

So if the pope can resign, we can, too. We should give up Catholicism en masse, if only for a time.

We are in the third week of Lent, a six-week season of reflection and personal sacrifice when Christians prepare for Easter by taking stock of their religious lives. In recent centuries Roman Catholics have observed Lent by giving up a habit or pleasure, whether red meat, chocolate, soap operas or Facebook, to simplify their lives and regain their independence from worldly attractions — their religious freedom, if you like.

Two years ago, Stephen Colbert gave up Catholicism itself. As the comedian told it, he swore off Catholicism on Ash Wednesday and made it as far as Good Friday, when he went on a “Catholic bender.” His riff inverted the old saying that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Mr. Colbert beat the pope to the punch.

In traditional parlance, Benedict’s resignation leaves the Chair of St. Peter “vacant.” So I propose that American Catholics vacate the pews this weekend.

We should seize this opportunity to ask what is true in our faith, what it costs us in obfuscation and moral compromise, and what its telos, or end purpose, really is. And we should explore other religious traditions, which we understand poorly.

For the Catholic Church, it has been “all bad news, all the time” since Benedict took office in 2005: a papal insult to Muslims; a papal embrace of a Holocaust denier; molesting by priests and cover-ups by their superiors. When the Scottish cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned on Monday amid reports of “inappropriate” conduct toward priests in the 1980s, the routine was wearingly familiar. It’s enough to make any Catholic yearn to leave the whole mess for someone else to clean up.

Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is a theologian. He would not have stepped down if he did not think he was setting a sound precedent: a resignation prompted by physical, not institutional, weakness. That he felt free to resign suggests that he thinks the church is doing fine. But countless ordinary Catholics know otherwise.

That is why this Sunday, I won’t be at the Oratory Church of St. Boniface in Downtown Brooklyn, even though I love it there — a welcoming, open-minded, authentically religious place.

Instead, I’ll be at the Brooklyn Meeting of the Quakers, who have long invited volunteers from our church to serve food to the poor.

Or I’ll be at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew, an Episcopal congregation that hosted the Occupy movement’s relief efforts after Hurricane Sandy.

Or I’ll go to the Zen Mountain Monastery at Mount Tremper, in the Catskills.

Or I’ll be in Washington, with colleagues who attend Shabbat services at Georgetown, the first American Catholic university and the first (four decades ago) to engage a full-time rabbi.

Or I’ll knock on the door of the Masjid Ibadul-Rahman, a mosque on my block, or the Zion Shiloh Baptist Church, across the street, or L’Église Baptiste d’Expression Française, on the corner.

I hope and expect to return to the Oratory church the following Sunday. But I can’t be sure. To some degree, it’s out of my hands, a response to a calling.

A temporary resignation would be a fitting Lenten observance. It would help believers to purify and deepen our faith in the light of our neighbors’ — “to examine our own religious notions, to sound them for genuineness,” as the American writer Flannery O’Connor put it. It would let us begin to figure out what in Catholicism we can take and what we can and ought to leave. It might even get the attention of the cardinals who will meet behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel and elect a pope in circumstances that one hopes would augur a time of change.

And it might dispel the resignation we feel. Most ordinary believers have given up hope that the church will change its ways. But Benedict’s resignation reminds us of a truth we have known all along: change in the church can happen, even dramatically. If so hidebound an institution as the papacy can be changed, what can’t be?

At Least Three Catholic Officials See Latest HHS Compromise as a Step Forward

My posting on February 6th wondered if the Obama Administration's latest olive branch on contraception coverage would prove to be a win for Catholic progressives.

Well, as The National Catholic Reporter notes, several of the most conservative bishops continued to dig in their heels on the need for a "conscience exception" for any employer -- religious or not -- who wants to veto employees' rights to contraception coverage.

Their predictable response not withstanding, it is encouraging that at least three U.S. church officials have called the most recent administration position a positive step in the right direction.

Moreover, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the current president of the U.S. bishops conference, felt the need to nuance his somewhat negative February 7th statement on behalf of the conference with a February 8th statement on his archdiocesan blog that the bishops had not rejected the new proposal and that they would "take seriously the Administration's invitation to submit our concerns through formal comments."  So at least officially, the bishops and the Administration are still talking.

Two of the church officials who spoke positively about the new accommodation for non-profits were bishops.

One was Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, FL.  His remarks are especially significant because he's also a member of the board of the Catholic Health Association, which represents the Catholic-affiliated hospitals in the United States.  NCR reports that, writing on February 9th, Lynch said:

"Clearly, the Administration has been desirous of listening to and accommodating the concerns of Catholics and other people and institutions of conscience, like myself.  One would be hard put to find any other segment of the American public whose concerns about the Affordable Health Care Act have attempted to be dealt with than those of the Catholic bishops."

Lynch added that the bishops should "consider ourselves lucky" that the Administration is "still talking to us."

Also weighing in with positive remarks was Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, WA.  In a letter to his diocese on February 11th, Cupich said, "This latest response of the government appears to provide some new openings, which we need to explore and for which we should express appreciation."  He added that he was "confident that we can find a way forward."

The third church official to value the Administration's olive branch was the president of the Catholic Health Association, Daughter of Charity Sr. Carol Keehan.  She differed with the bishops by supporting the Affordable Care Act, but also lead in trying to get the contraception policy modified in a way that would better allow Catholic institutions not to actively countermand the bishops' official position on contraception.

Keehan said in a statement February 13th that while her organization was still evaluating the HHS proposal, some of the latest provisions were "a great relief our members and many others.  CHA looks forward to working with our members, the leadership of the Bishops' Conference and the Administration to complete this process."

Keehan certainly qualifies as a Catholic progressive.  Hopefully other Catholic progressives will follow her in valuing the latest policy proposal as one which protects the bishops' legitimate concerns without allowing them to trample on the religious freedom and freedom of conscience of the employees of church-related institutions.

Catholic progressives could also make a contribution by insisting, again, that a "conscience exception" for any other employer is neither morally justified nor Constitutional.

Is Latest Olive Branch on Contraception Coverage a Win for Catholic Progressives?

On February 1, 2013, the Obama administration offered a new olive branch to the Catholic Church in the controversy over the contraception coverage mandated for all health insurance policies by the Affordable Care Act.

In an analysis posted the same day, Washington Post Opinion Writer E.J. Dionne Jr. argued that "The decision ought to be taken by the nation's Catholic bishops as a victory, because it is."

But what Dionne's full analysis shows is that the government's latest proposal may well be a more important victory for "Catholic progressives" -- because what persuaded Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was not the bishops' disproportionate, hysterical ranting about an attack on their religious liberty, but rather the Catholic progressives' concern that Sebelius had defined the term "religious organization" too narrowly and failed to accommodate religious institutions that self-insure.

As Dionne recounts it, the original rules that Sebelius offered said that "If a religious organization did not have 'the inculcation of religious values' as its purpose and did not primarily employ or serve those who shared the faith, it got no exclusion at all."  By contrast, says Dionne, "The HHS rules announced Friday scrapped this offensive definition in favor of long-established language in the IRS code."  By substituting the existing language of the Internal Revenue Code, Sebelius in effect broadened the term "religious organization" to include all Catholic entities doing charitable work and probably even those promoting social justice.

Dionne notes that Sebelius has also addressed the concern that many Catholic institutions self-insure and did not want to pay for "any contraception coverage to which they object on religious grounds."  The remedy for that concern is that employees of such institutions who want contraception coverage will be able to get "stand-alone coverage from a third party" without anything being paid by the institution -- "covered by small offsets in the fees insurers will have to pay to participate in the new exchanges where their policies will be on sale."

I did not share the Catholic progressives' view that the original definition was offensive.  But I did agree that it was unlikely to fly politically.  Coming to the same conclusion, Sebelius gave Obama and Catholics a way out of the controversy.

So will the new proposal prove to be a victory for Catholic progressives?  I say maybe, because the Catholic progressives don't get the final say on this.  A few future developments may prove critical:

First of all, how will the U.S. bishops react?  If they deem the latest from Sebelius to be acceptable, the controversy will end based on terms pushed primarily by Catholic progressives.  So yes, a gain for them.

Second, however, if they do find the latest proposal agreeable, what rationale will the bishops give for their shift?  Dionne argues that "The church made a mistake in arguing its case on the grounds of 'religious liberty.'  By inflating their legitimate desire for accommodation into a liberty claim, the bishops implied that the freedom not to pay for birth control rose to the same level as, say, the freedom to worship or to preach the faith.  This led to wild rhetorical excesses..."  If the bishops try to twist the olive branch into a victory for their 'religious liberty' position, they will be distorting what the Catholic progressives worked for and achieved.

And third, whatever response and rationale the bishops give, how does this play out among ordinary Catholics?  Although it was bogus, theologically and constitutionally, some bishops got some Catholics to buy their 'religious liberty' line:  even Catholics who have never accepted the church's official teaching on contraception somehow felt that their church was being attacked and its religious freedom was being violated.  The best outcome would be that most ordinary Catholics end up understanding that that was never the case--and that Obama has corrected the only inadequacies of the original rules:  the overly narrow definition of "religious organization," and how to keep religious institutions that self-insure from paying for contraception to which they object on religious grounds.

So, as they say, time will tell.  If Catholic progressives do indeed have a victory, they will still need to remember that final victories are very, very rare -- in politics, constitutional law or theology.

"Why Does It Have to Be This Difficult? Because...Otherwise It Doesn't Work"

The headline to this post is a quotation from award-winning Director Ang Lee.  It's part of his lengthier comments on the arduous, multi-year process during which he led 2,000 people to turn Yann Martel's Booker Prize-winning 2002 best-seller "Life of Pi" into what is expected to be an outstanding 3-D film.  Given Lee's previous achievements -- "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Brokeback Mountain" -- some expect "Life of Pi" to become a classic.

As testimony to the creative process required to make the movie, the comments are valuable in their own right.  But borrowing from Alfred North Whitehead's method of descriptive generalization, I would also like to note how they exemplify Whitehead's notion of creativity in general--and how, more particularly, they can teach patience and equanimity to those of us who are frustrated with the glacial pace of movements to reform the Christian churches.

Lee made his remarks in an interview with freelance writer Pam Grady, posted yesterday on the new "premium website" of the Houston Chronicle (www.houstonchronicle.com).  In comments toward the end of the interview, Lee notes how much of the movie's action takes place on water.  He notes that no one previously had much success capturing water in 3-D, then describes how hard they labored to overcome the challenge of water's reflectivity:

"You're so helpless... Water is really hard to deal with, especially a large quantity of water.  It's hard digitally when you're creating an image.   It's hard when you're shooting.  It's just very difficult.  Sometimes, between the 3-D and the water, we could spend 12 hours, all night long, and not get anything done.  You just curse and curse and curse, look up at God, 'Why?  I'm trying to make a stupid movie.  Why?'

"We sort of became the movie we were making...  It always happens that way, and I picked the hardest one, I think, this one.  You look up at God, 'Why does it have to be this difficult?,' but eventually God answers, 'Because it has to be that way, otherwise it doesn't work.'  You learn from those things, it's inspiring.  Everything goes, your imagination goes.  If it's too easy, it wouldn't be as provoking and solid as it should be."

To really understand how what Lee went through exemplifies Whitehead's creativity, I'll have to refer readers to my PhD dissertation, linked in the column to the right of these postings.  But in summary form:

Whitehead sees God offering each creature multiple opportunities to bring novelty to the universe and multiple means to give novelty life.  The process hinges on God's persistence in luring forth new creations, our creativity in responding to those lures, and God incorporating and harmonizing the results of our efforts into his ever-enlarging cosmic self.  Whitehead's capsule expression of this ultimate metaphysical principle appears at the very top of this blog:  "The many become one, and are increased by one."

Just before reading Lee's interview, I had read another article reporting that this week the Church of England is having a synod in London, where three houses (laity, priests and bishops) are being asked to decide if the Church of England will have female bishops.  The article prompted several emotions about the state of church reform.

One emotion is frustration that the Church of England is still struggling with this issue, when (unlike the Roman Catholic Church) it has no problem with women priests:  the article reports that already one-third of the Church of England clergy are females, as are one-half of candidates for the priesthood.  In addition, female bishops already exist in other national churches of the Anglican Communion, including the United States, where Kathryn Jefferts Schori has been the 26th Presiding Bishop since 2006.

However, several other considerations cushion the frustration.  Among them:  (1) unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, along with most of the churches of the Anglican Communion, believes that God does indeed call women to the priesthood; (2) thus the Church of England is much farther along on this issue than the Church of Rome, as well as some of the more right-wing fundamentalist churches in the United States; and (3) this allows God's Spirit to breath differently in different churches, perhaps thereby showing where all Christian entities are intended to be one day.

This last point is where I think Ang Lee's experience of creativity speaks most directly and most helpfully.  Lee reminds us that the creativity most worth achieving is rarely without tedious, painful, sometimes infuriating effort.  But especially in the context of Christianity, it also reminds us that the most sustained, reliable, predictable effort is God's own.  If some may say no to God's lures, God can be counted on to try others who might say yes.  When the Catholic Church, for instance, declares officially that God may not call women to holy orders, the experience of the Anglican Communion testifies that, au contraire, God certainly can and God certainly does.

So in the matter of trying to get the Christian churches to grow up and stop being obstacles to the realization of God's reign on earth, I think Ang Lee's experience of God and creativity provides a lot of perspective and encouragement.  "Why does it have to be this difficult?  Because...otherwise it doesn't work."

In the 1960s it was my firm conviction that the Spirit of God was trying to reform the Roman Catholic Church from within.  That appeared to be confirmed in many ways during the years of Vatican II.  However the curias of three subsequent apostate popes (Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI) certainly put the brakes on that.

But I need to be reminded of what I argued in my own doctoral dissertation:  where and how God's Spirit blows is not ours to predict or decide.  If some church officials close their ears and their hearts to the Spirit's promptings, there are other church leaders ready to take up the cause.  Throw up road blocks though we may, the Spirit of the Living God is endlessly active, and sooner or later God will lure forth the universe God craves.

So to learn from Ang Lee:  the Spirit of God will not take no for an answer.  If the barque of Peter develops too many leaks, it may well sink.  But we shall stay afloat in whatever lifeboats the Spirit of God has provided--from the Reformation churches, from other religions, and from the experience of decent people everywhere.  Amen.

Government for, by the Corporation: Why a Houstonian Dreads Citizens United

Most Texans think the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case was a perfectly fine idea.

Since it allowed mega-rich corporations the legal status of individual persons and afforded them virtually unlimited free speech rights, there is now nothing to stop such business entities from spending as much as they want to buy politicians who will do their bidding in office.

One Texan not among them, though, is Cele S. Keeper, a social worker, group therapist and writer who, in her 85th year, grasps quite lucidly that the decision enables a corporate takeover of government at any level the corporations choose.

She spelled out her dread of the decision in a recent essay on the editorial page of The Houston Chronicle.  She marshals several arguments against the wisdom of Citizens United, and makes it clear that, if the decision stands, the country cannot.

I would argue that, short of a future reversal by the Supreme Court, the nation requires a constitutional amendment:  it would say that (1) corporations (and churches and political parties and unions) are never individual persons, (2) the Bill of Rights does not apply to them, and (3) Congress has a duty to regulate campaign spending so that no entity can ever corrupt the electoral process or buy its winners.

Keeper's excellent essay follows:

Foreboding thought for today: The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision may herald the unraveling of our precious democracy.

Now well after midnight, it certainly is keeping me awake. I'm trying to get my head around the idea that a corporation is a person who can buy chosen candidates to further its agenda and therefore buy duly elected representatives and senators who will then pass legislation that makes that agenda into law. That sounds not like a government takeover, but a takeover of government.

The Citizens United decision held that corporations are people and, thus protected by the majority's (5-4) interpretation of the freedom of speech clause in the First Amendment, are permitted to have a voice not unlike that of any individual voter.

Further, the court gave permission for the formation of Super PACs that can lavish money upon a candidate provided he or she has no contact with the chosen candidate's campaign apparatus. (That was a joke.)

Living in a perpetual conundrum in my 85th year, I love politics and loathe most politicians. In addition to the falsifying, denying, conniving, exaggerating, manipulating, self-serving diatribes to which they subject us while attempting to procure our votes, they are now (thanks to the Court's outrageous ruling) loaded up with gazillions of dollars supplied by corporations that need not disclose their identities and whose agendas are promoted by self-interest (read: influencing, even writing legislation.)

My single vote (and yours) has little or no influence beyond my family and friends. Although, of course, I can work with groups of like-minded folks to urge the election of a favored candidate.

But while earnest neighbors are walking the blocks in their precinct, knocking on doors, or addressing flyers and licking envelopes, a single TV ad by a Super PAC can be repeatedly pounded into the eyes and ears of thousands or millions of potential voters. Such ads are paid for by gobs of money channeled from outside the state in which the election is being held into a particular race to take down or propel a targeted candidate out of or into office.

If all of that's not bad enough, forget about accuracy, which is in short supply in the cacophony of babble on our television screens. Allegations, accusations, character assassinations are there for all viewers to gobble up. The credo of the spinmeister reads: "Never let the facts spoil a great ad."

And if I should be a stockholder (or more particularly, a board member) in a corporation that is pouring money into a Super PAC for its chosen candidate, what if its candidate and mine are not the same? Have I simply been outvoted?

Have I no recourse? Or does the board even participate in these decisions?

Give it some thought: "Government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation." I just don't like the sound of it, so I will now join that exasperating bunch of people who tell us they know exactly what the Framers thought. Although all wealthy landowners, I simply don't believe these wise souls could foresee a corporate takeover of governance.

Further, have we citizens no recourse to get rid of this democracy-shattering decision?

And oh yes, sleep well.