Catholic University Dedicates One of Gay Architect's Last Designs

On September 25th Houston's University of St. Thomas commemorated the addition to its campus of another landmark design by the late world-renowned archtect Philip Johnson. The landmark is an entrance marker at the northeast corner of the campus, heralding the university as a gateway to Houston's highly regarded Museum District. Johnson completed the landmark's design before his death in 2005.

Press releases by the university, speakers at the dedication and media coverage noted that Johnson had also designed the university's Chapel of St. Basil, as well as other Houston landmarks like the Rothko Chapel, Pennzoil Place, Transco Tower (now Williams Tower), and the home of the late arts patron and philanthropist Dominique de Menil. Other Johnson designs in Houston include the Republic Bank Center (now Bank of America Center) and the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the Universty of Houston.

Johnson designed numerous famous structures elsewhere. A partial list: his own Glass House in New Canaan, CT; the Seagram Building in New York City, as well the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center; the Boston Public Library; the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza in Dallas; the IDS Center in Minneapolis; the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, CA; Comerica Tower in Detroit; Puerto de Europa in Madrid; Das Amerikan Business Center in Berlin; Turning Point in Vienna.

What coverage of the new landmark did not point out is that Philip Johnson was a gay man, who lived with his partner David Whitney for 45 years. Johnson died January 25, 2005, at the age of 98. Whitney died June 12, 2005, at the age of 66. I do not know if Johnson's sexuality or long-term same-sex partnership had any impact on his work. But it is not insignificant that a Catholic University named after St. Thomas Aquinas would have much of its campus and two significant buildings designed by an architect widely known to be gay. At the very least, perhaps the university can teach the official church something about treating gay people with dignity and respect.

Below is an edited version of the university's press release announcing the dedication of the new landmark. The complete text is available at http://www.stthom.edu/Public/Index.asp?0=0&page_id=3618Source_URL=%2FOnline_Newsroom%2FIndex.aqf&Content_ID=7511

“The University of St. Thomas has been blessed with some of the earliest and the latest Philip Johnson designs,” said University President Dr. Robert R. Ivany. “During the middle 1950s, the late Houston arts patron Dominique de Menil brought a virtually unknown Johnson to Houston to design her own home, then to create what would become the Academic Mall here at the University. His influence on Texas, Houston and St. Thomas campus has been a lasting one.”

More than 50 years ago Philip Johnson drew plans for the new University of St. Thomas campus at the behest of philanthropist and art collector Mrs. Dominique de Menil. The first buildings on the Johnson-designed Academic Mall were completed in 1958. On the new Mall, the Jones Hall auditorium/lecture hall as well as the exhibition gallery became the heart of the cultural and artistic activities on campus. The last of the Mall buildings, Malloy Hall, was dedicated in 2001.

Johnson came out of retirement during the mid-1990s to design the Chapel of St. Basil, dedicated in 1997. Located at the north end of the Mall, the Chapel faces the Doherty Library at the south end, an architectural arrangement that represents dialogue between faith and reason. Thus, the architecture embodies the philosophy of UST’s patron, St. Thomas Aquinas. The Philip Johnson design, with classrooms opening onto a lush, green lawn, resembles Thomas Jefferson’s design of the University of Virginia.

Just as Johnson came out of retirement to design the Chapel of St. Basil, the architect also rendered a “landmark” design to herald the University as a gateway to the Houston Museum District.

The Johnson landmark consists of a granite-clad reinforced concrete structure with a studded cross attached at the same angle of repose as the cross in the west wall of the Chapel of St. Basil. The black granite monument, also called a stele, which stands about 36-feet tall and 14-feet wide, alludes to the black granite plane that bisects the campus Chapel. The white granite plaza around the landmark is made of the same material as the plaza in front of the Chapel. Additionally, the landmark has a 17- x 32-foot reflecting pool tiled with a blue glass tile. A water wall, standing 6-feet in height, is erected on the plaza’s west side. The water cascades behind a set of aluminum letters that spell out “University of St. Thomas.”

The site of the Philip Johnson work is named in memory of Edward P. White, a major University of St. Thomas benefactor.

"Make It Right" Plans 150 New Homes for New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward

The following article in New Orleans' Times-Picayune today is posted at http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/09/lower_9th_ward_project_to_buil.html

Lower 9th Ward project to build 150 homes
By Michelle Krupa Staff writer

In a novel and ambitious effort to return New Orleans homeowners to their own neighborhood, an international consortium of architects led by film star Brad Pitt announced plans Wednesday to develop at least 150 storm-safe, environmentally sound houses in the section of the Lower 9th Ward reduced to rubble by a massive levee breach.

Working lot by lot instead of amassing huge development tracts, the project, dubbed Make It Right, will take applications from homeowners who want to rebuild their own properties with model homes now being designed, said Virginia Miller, a New Orleans spokeswoman for the project.

"Make It Right isn't buying big parcels of land," she said. "We don't have an interest in being a developer. We have an interest in building houses for people."

Unlike other plans, including recovery director Ed Blakely's $1.1 billion blueprint to rebuild the city starting in 17 target zones, Make It Right is not designed around a traditional commercial center, nor does it aim to expand an area already beginning to thrive.

Instead, it focuses squarely on a neighborhood that has become an icon of New Orleans' destruction: the blocks just east of where a powerful storm surge crashed through the Industrial Canal floodwall during Hurricane Katrina, obliterating dozens of homes and reducing hundreds more to piles of splintered rubbish.

Miller said the project area will extend across the 11 blocks between North Claiborne Avenue and the Florida Avenue Canal, and several blocks to the east, though precisely how far is in flux.

With the average home expected to cost between $100,000 and $174,000, planners anticipate most homeowners will be able to contribute some cash for construction but that most will fall about $70,000 short of paying off their new homes, according to a program dossier.

As a result, Make It Right plans to offer forgivable gap loans of as much as $100,000, with the caveat that applicants must have owned a home or lot in the Lower 9th Ward before Katrina. No homeowners who participate in the program will pay more than 30 percent of their gross monthly income on house payments, documents show.

Homeowners will be expected to contribute money from insurance proceeds, savings and Road Home grants, and to investigate their options in the traditional mortgage market. But Miller said a large loan reserve will be available, financed largely by contributions of $5 million each from Pitt and Steve Bing, a film producer and philanthropist who inherited his family's real estate fortune.

In an effort to bolster that initial investment, Pitt went to New York on Wednesday to solicit donations at the official unveiling of Make It Right during a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, an endeavor by former President Clinton to engage world leaders in tackling environmental problems.

Pitt asked participants to match his and Bing's contributions in hopes of raising $20 million for the project, Miller said. She did not know whether they managed to reach that goal.

Like another Lower 9th Ward project that Pitt has spearheaded -- the Global Green USA contest to develop "green" housing and community/retail space in the Holy Cross neighborhood -- Make It Right is rooted in principles of environmentalism, including using solar power for heat, installing energy-efficient appliances and allocating space for recycling and composting.

Home designs for the project also will include features to keep residents safe in a hurricane, including waterproof building materials, roof-level patios that can serve as safe havens and attic storage space for emergency equipment such as food and rafts, documents show.

At the same time, the homes will reflect traditional New Orleans architectural styles, such as shotguns, camelbacks and Creole cottages, and will incorporate high ceilings, front porches and gingerbread details.

Thirteen architects, including five local firms and others of international renown, are working now to develop prototype houses that will vary in size and include yards and parking areas, Miller said.

Though she did not know when designs are due, Miller said project directors will begin working with applicants to begin construction as soon as blueprints are complete.

"One of the missions is to be quick about this," she said, adding that substantial progress should be under way within a year.

In conceiving Make It Right, Miller said Pitt and others sought advice from Lower 9th Ward residents, in part by attending meetings of nine community organizations, including ACORN, Common Ground Relief and All Congregations Together.

Among the chief recommendations they adopted was to work directly with homeowners to rebuild on their own lots, rather than recruiting a major developer to erect new houses or apartments to sell to residents, Miller said. The latter model has driven fears -- so far unsubstantiated -- that large builders will take advantage of the absence of thousands of homeowners to gobble up vacant neighborhoods cheaply, then erect substandard housing.

"They didn't want developers coming in," Miller said.

Tanya Harris, a community organizer with ACORN, said members of the project team, including Pitt, began attending community meetings in March and asked residents to help spread the word about the project to their neighbors.

However, Harris said representatives offered scant details of their plans, one reason she refused their request for a copy of ACORN's contact list.

"They didn't tell us much except that Brad Pitt had a vision," she said. "I'm an organizer, so I need to see numbers in black and white."

Harris said residents were not apprised of the project before it was announced Wednesday in New York. Nevertheless, she said she would not oppose efforts to revive the Lower 9th Ward in ways that respect residents' wishes.

Though Make It Right is not technically part of the Lower 9th Ward target zone identified in Blakely's plan, it was included, though under a different name, in a draft plan created by city's Office of Recovery Management, Miller said.

In the draft, a project called Cherokee Housing would receive $250,000 of $117 million in federal community development block grants that the Louisiana Recovery Authority has earmarked for infrastructure improvements in New Orleans.

Miller suspected the project was given that name because one of the Make It Right partners is the Cherokee Gives Back Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Cherokee Investment Partners, a firm that specializes in remediation and sustainable redevelopment. She stressed that Cherokee is among a cadre of participants that also includes William McDonough, a pioneer of environmental engineering based in Virginia.

Though Miller said she was not aware that project leaders had been in contact with the city or the LRA, City Hall spokesman James Ross said staffers with the recovery office "included $250,000 for site preparation for the project after developers indicated they might need that amount."

Ross said the money can be allocated only after a public bidding process and it is not guaranteed until the award is made. If the sum is not spent for the project, it will be directed to another recovery need, Ross said.

Episcopal Bishops Tell Primates What They Will Do--and What They Will Not

As a lead-in to press coverage of the statement issued yesterday by the Episcopal House of Bishops in New Orleans, the Episcopal Church blog epiScope notes today "how many competing interpretations can be made of one document that is only one day old and written in the contemporary language of those reporting on it, with the authors nearby for clarification!" The blog and links to the wide variety of spins are at http://episcopalchurch.typepad.com/episcope/

The following are some paragraphs from the church's official article on the statement. The full article is at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_90460_ENG_HTM.htm

Bishops provide 'clarity' in response to Primates' communiqué
By Pat McCaughan and Mary Frances Schjonberg
September 25, 2007

After nearly a full day of deliberations, the House of Bishops on September 25 agreed overwhelmingly by voice vote to reiterate the 2006 General Convention Resolution B033 that said they would "exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion."

They also pledged not to authorize public rites for same-gender blessings "until a broader consensus emerges in the Communion, or until General Convention takes further action," according to the response.

The final statement adopted by the House of Bishops is being sent immediately via email to the JSC and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is traveling in Armenia and Syria, a spokesperson for the Anglican Communion said.

Intended to clarify General Convention Resolution B033, the document offered the strongest language thus far about interventions from overseas bishops in local dioceses. "We deplore incursions into our jurisdictions by uninvited bishops and call for them to end," the document said. It also called for "unequivocal and active commitment to the civil rights, safety, and dignity of gay and lesbian persons."

Whether the Primates will find the response satisfactory remains to be seen. The complete text of the bishops' statement is at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_90457_ENG_HTM.htm

The Night Louis Armstrong Said Eisenhower Had "No Guts"

The article below tells the story, little known today, of September 17, 1957, the night Louis Armstrong said he'd had enough of "The way they are treating my people in the South." The uncharacteristic public outburst by the normally laid-back Armstrong was backed by Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt and Marian Anderson. It embarrassed President Eisenhower into enforcing integration of Little Rock's Central High School one week later. Eisenhower sent 1,200 paratroopers to Little Rock to escort nine black students into the school, which led Armstrong to wire the president "God bless you," and inspired Norman Rockwell's iconic work above.


The article, in today's print edition of the Houston Chronicle, first appeared in the New York Times. It was posted yesterday at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/5161213.html


The day Louis Armstrong blew more than his trumpet
Angry words against racism sparked by Little Rock Nine
By DAVID MARGOLICK
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle


Fifty years ago this week, all eyes were on Little Rock, Ark., where nine black students were trying, for the first time, to desegregate a major Southern high school. The town of Grand Forks, N.D., with fewer than 150 blacks, hardly figured to be a key front in that battle — until Larry Lubenow talked to Louis Armstrong.

On the night of Sept. 17, 1957, two weeks after the Little Rock Nine were first barred from Central High School, the jazz trumpeter happened to be on tour in Grand Forks. Larry Lubenow was a 21-year-old journalism student and jazz fan at the University of North Dakota, moonlighting for $1.75 an hour at The Grand Forks Herald.

Shortly before Armstrong's concert, Lubenow's editor sent him to the Dakota Hotel, where Armstrong was staying, to see if he could land an interview. Perhaps sensing trouble — Lubenow was, he now says, a "rabble-rouser and liberal" — his boss laid out the ground rules: "No politics," he ordered. That hardly seemed necessary, for Armstrong rarely ventured into such things. "I don't get involved in politics," he once said. "I just blow my horn."

But Lubenow was thinking about other things, race relations among them. The bell captain, with whom he was friendly, had told him that Armstrong was quietly making history in Grand Forks, as he had done innumerable times and ways before, by becoming the first black man ever to stay at what was then the best hotel in town.

Lubenow knew, too, that Grand Forks had its own link to Little Rock: it was the hometown of Judge Ronald Davies, who had just ordered that the desegregation plan in Little Rock proceed after Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus tried to block it.

As Armstrong prepared to play that night — at Grand Forks' own Central High School — members of the Arkansas National Guard ringed the school in Little Rock, ordered to keep the black students out. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's meeting with Faubus three days earlier had ended inconclusively. Central High School was open, but the black children stayed home.

Lubenow was first told he couldn't talk to Armstrong until after the concert. That wouldn't do. With the connivance of the bell captain, he snuck into Armstrong's suite with a room service lobster dinner. And Armstrong, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, agreed to talk. Lubenow stuck initially to his editor's script, asking Armstrong to name his favorite musician. (Bing Crosby, it turned out.) But soon he brought up Little Rock, and he could not believe what he heard. "It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country," a furious Armstrong told him. Eisenhower, he charged, was "two-faced," and had "no guts." For Faubus, he used a double-barreled hyphenated expletive, utterly unfit for print. The two settled on something safer: "uneducated plowboy." The euphemism, Lubenow says, was far more his than Armstrong's.

Armstrong bitterly recounted some of his experiences touring in the Jim Crow South. He then sang the opening bar of The Star-Spangled Banner, inserting obscenities into the lyrics and prompting Velma Middleton, the vocalist who toured with Armstrong and who had joined them in the room, to hush him up.

Armstrong had been contemplating a good-will tour to the Soviet Union for the State Department. "They ain't so cold but what we couldn't bruise them with happy music," he had said. Now, though, he confessed to having second thoughts. "The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell," he said. "The people over there ask me what's wrong with my country. What am I supposed to say?"

Lubenow was shocked by what he heard, but he also knew he had a story; he skipped the concert and went back to the paper to write it up. It was too late to get it into his own paper; nor would The Associated Press editor in Minneapolis, dubious that Armstrong could have said such things, put it on the national wire, at least until Lubenow could prove he hadn't made it all up.

So the next morning Lubenow returned to the Dakota Hotel and, as Armstrong shaved, had the Herald photographer take their picture together. Then Lubenow showed Armstrong what he'd written. "Don't take nothing out of that story," Armstrong declared. "That's just what I said, and still say." He then wrote "solid" on the bottom of the yellow copy paper, and signed his name.

The news account ran all over the country. The Russians, an anonymous government spokesman warned, would relish everything Armstrong had said. A radio station in Hattiesburg, Miss., threw out all of Armstrong's records. Sammy Davis Jr. criticized Armstrong for not speaking out earlier. But Jackie Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt and Marian Anderson quickly backed him up.

Mostly, there was surprise, especially among blacks. Armstrong had long tried to convince people throughout the world that "the Negro's lot in America is a happy one," Jet magazine, which once called Armstrong an "Uncle Tom," observed, but in one bold stroke he'd pulled nearly 15 million American blacks to his bosom. Any white confused by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s polite talk need only listen to Armstrong, The Amsterdam News declared.

Armstrong's road manager quickly put out that Armstrong had been tricked, and regretted his statements, but Armstrong would have none of that. "I said what somebody should have said a long time ago," he said the following day in Montevideo, Minn., where he gave his next concert.

Armstrong would pay a price for his outspokenness. There were calls for boycotts of his concerts. Ford Motor Co. threatened to pull out of a Bing Crosby special on which Armstrong was to appear. But it didn't really matter.

On Sept. 24, Eisenhower sent 1,200 paratroopers from the 101st Airborne into Little Rock, and the next day soldiers escorted the nine students into Central High School. Armstrong exulted. "If you decide to walk into the schools with the little colored kids, take me along, Daddy," he wired the president. "God bless you."

As for Lubenow, who these days works in public relations in Cedar Park, Texas, he got $3.50 for writing the story and, perhaps, for changing history. But his editor was miffed — he'd gotten into politics, after all. Within a week, he left the paper.

Margolick, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of "Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling and a World on the Brink." This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

A Medical Security System--For Everyone

Laurence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University, has a proposal for universal health care that overcomes shortcomings he sees in "the piecemeal reforms that President Bush, most of his would-be successors and our state governors are advocating."

Below are the closing paragraphs of an article that first appeared in the Boston Globe on August 28th. The Houston Chronicle reprinted it on September 23rd, but without proper attribution to the Boston Globe. The complete original is at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/08/28/we_are_all_uninsured_now/

We are all uninsured now

My solution is called the Medical Security System. It would eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and (by dropping the tax breaks) employer-based healthcare. The government would give everyone a voucher each year for a basic health plan. The size of the voucher would be based on one's health status. Those in worse health would get bigger vouchers, leaving insurers no incentive to cherry-pick. Furthermore, insurers would not be permitted to refuse a voucher or otherwise deny coverage.

The government would set the total voucher budget as a fixed share of gross domestic product and determine what a basic plan must cover. We would choose our own health plans. If we cost the insurer more than the voucher, he would lose money. If we cost him less, he would make money. Insurers would compete for our business and could tailor provisions, like co-pays and incentives to stop smoking, to limit excessive use of the healthcare system and encourage healthy behavior.

Nothing would be nationalized. Virtually all of the cost would be covered by redirecting existing government healthcare expenditures as well as tax breaks. Doctors, hospitals, and insurers would continue to market their services on a competitive basis.

This is not a French, British, or Canadian solution. It's an American, market-based solution that Republicans should love. It's also a progressive solution that Democrats should love. (Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel has endorsed it.) The poor, who are, on average, in worse health, will receive, on average, larger vouchers. The rich will lose their tax breaks.

Why can't a country as rich as ours come up with a system that works? This, in essence, was Justice O'Connor's parting question.

But, in fact, we can. Now if we can just get the big cheeses in the Oval Office or on their way there to start thinking big . . .

Without a New Deal, New Orleans Is Just Casinoville

The following article, which I highly recommend, appeared in this morning's print edition of the Houston Chronicle. The newspaper might like to explain why a shorter version posted on its website omits most of the paragraphs about racial politics and current hurricane readiness. It's at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5146894.html

New Orleans sits at critical juncture
Historian says redevelopment hurt by ineptitude and indifference
By ALLAN TURNER

Two years after Hurricane Katrina blasted into the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts to create the costliest natural disaster in the nation's history, New Orleans stands at a crucial crossroads.

In one direction looms a future as a casino-driven adult entertainment mecca, said historian Douglas Brinkley. In the other, the promise of rebirth as a cultural capital and city of stable, close-knit neighborhoods.

Key to the city's fate, said Brinkley, is whether the American public is prepared to commit $50 billion or more to enhancing the city's levees and restoring eroded wetlands that shield the largely below-sea-level city from nature's fury.

"The next president will be the one to make the decision," Brinkley said. "By 2012 — one more administration after this — it will be apparent in which direction New Orleans will go."

Brinkley spoke Tuesday at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. A tenured Rice history professor and institute fellow, Brinkley is the author of The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which this year won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

A former professor at New Orleans' Tulane University, Brinkley said redevelopment of the stricken city has faltered through political indifference or ineptitude. "Katrina," he said, "wiped out all the major players."

Mayor C. Ray Nagin, he charged, engaged in "raw buffoonery," indulging in racial politics that limited his ability to address the city's desperate problems. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's efforts were hampered by her Democratic Party affiliation.

President Bush, he said, adopted a policy of deliberate inaction. "The situation was too volatile racially for him to handle," Brinkley said. Rather than advising residents of hard-hit, sub-sea-level African-American neighborhoods not to return, Brinkley said, the president tacitly welcomed them back.

"It's disingenuous," Brinkley added, noting neighborhoods like the Lower 9th Ward still lack schools and essential services. Banks, Brinkley said, are reluctant to grant loans for rebuilding in those areas, insurance companies disinclined to write policies.

Furthermore, Brinkley said, Bush has concentrated on fighting a war on terror rather than addressing New Orleans' significant social and ecological concerns. "It is," he said, "an ugly kind of scenario."

With 350 miles of levees needing attention and huge expanses of wetlands needing restoration — 1,900 square miles of wetlands have been lost since the 1930s — nothing less than a New Deal-magnitude public works project can save the Crescent City and coastal Louisiana, Brinkley said.

"I promise you," Brinkley told his audience, "New Orleans is not prepared for even a Category 1 hurricane."

Today, Brinkley said, New Orleans is a city divided not so much by race as by geography. The French Quarter, Garden District and other tourist destinations situated on the river's natural levee largely escaped damage. Neighborhoods in low-lying areas, though, were devastated.

Katrina, a Category 3 storm, struck the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts on August 29, 2005, causing more than $81 billion in damage. New Orleans escaped the storm's initial fury but experienced devastating flooding when canal levees failed.

Without wise restoration and development, Brinkley said, the city could become little more than a string of casinos--an adult tourist destination devoid of its vibrant, neighborhood-fueled culture.

If the Dutch can protect the low-lying cities and the Italians preserve Venice, "why can't we in the U.S. save New Orleans? It asks who we are as a generation," he said.

Iraqi Wacky: Bush Bequeaths Insanity “Beyond My Presidency”

It would be nice to be able to say something insightful or conclusive or constructive about last week’s national effort to assess where we stand in Iraq. But after wildly divergent reactions from several recognized experts—some at odds with their own previous selves—maybe all we can say with any certainty is that Iraq has made us wacky. In the last seven days, we have witnessed:

George Will, generally an apologist for conservative causes and Bush’s military adventures in Iraq, saying that by conspicuously snubbing Baghdad and visiting only Anbar on his recent Iraq stopover, Bush underscored that the surge failed (as measured by his own and General Petraeus’ standards of success)—leaving no credible military mission there for the United States. Will added that the already-planned troop rotations (back to pre-surge levels + 7,000), a draw-down which Petraeus labeled significant, was way too puny to satisfy the Democrats’ anti-war base.

E.J. Dionne, usually an apologist for liberal causes and the Democrats’ efforts to bring the troops home sooner, saying that the congressional testimony of Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker made enough of a case for progress to give teetering Republicans political cover and prevent most of them from abandoning Bush. Dionne added that House Armed Services Committee Chair Ike Skelton was astute to grasp how Bush had boxed the Democrats in, by denying them Republican votes to cut off war-funding. As Skelton saw, the Democrats’ only hope was for other generals to shout out their fear that the Iraq war is “breaking our Army” and leaving us “unable to deal with other risks to our nation.”

Ellen Goodman, predictably an apologist for liberal causes and the Democrats’ efforts to bring the troops home sooner, saying that Petraeus and Crocker had managed to reduce five years of war to “the tale of two catastrophes”: the war proponents’ vision that things will get horrifically worse if we leave Iraq, vs. the war opponents’ vision that staying the course will only stay the disaster—causing more American warriors to give their lives for a deficient objective—replacing mission creep with “mission shrink.”

Charles Krauthammer, normally an apologist for conservative causes and Bush’s military adventures in Iraq, saying that “Petraeus’ withdrawal recommendations have prevented a revolt of the generals,” by showing them that if he can win over enough Iraqi Sunnis, the U.S. can replace defeat of the original objective, to establish a unified democratic Iraq, with an important replacement objective, tactical victory over “al-Qaida in Iraq.” But never did he acknowledge that there was no “al-Qaida in Iraq” until Bush challenged them to a high-noon duel for the Sunnis’ allegiance, and that now even if we win the duel, al-Qaida can gloat about how many years they bogged us down.

Thomas Friedman, one of the few columnists who can be counted on to remain genuinely moderate and carefully adjust his Iraq position in response to actual facts on the ground, agreeing with David Rothkopf, visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, that in his speech last Thursday evening “In one fell swoop, George Bush abdicated to Petraeus, Maliki and the Democrats.” And so, Rothkopf added: “Bush left it to Petraeus to handle the war, Maliki to handle our timetable and … our checkbook, and the Democrats to ultimately figure out how to end this.”

It seemed no columnist wanted to touch the controversy over the “General Betray Us” ad by MoveOn.org. Questioning the general’s honesty was tacky, and pointless. Instead, MoveOn should have asked if Petraeus, once he got his marching orders in person from the Commander in Chief, could really be expected not to report that the orders had been carried out. The answer was obvious, and it was naïve for anyone to expect otherwise.

If they agree on nothing else, just about everyone fears that Bush has now succeeded in prolonging the war “beyond my presidency.” And if it is the Democrats who extract us from Iraq in 2009, the Republicans can spend the next few decades blaming them for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They learned that trick after Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger followed the country’s will and withdrew from Vietnam. They have no reason to think it won’t work again.

Speaking of the president’s stubborn drive to mitigate his Iraq failure any way he can, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said over the weekend that Bush “must think we’re all idiots.” Perhaps. But so far history is proving him right: so long as we allow him to continue as idiot-in-chief, we give the world every reason to doubt our competence, and our sanity.

Bush did not look well yesterday, nominating former judge Michael Mukasey as attorney general, to replace the disgraced Alberto Gonzales. I have found no references to it on Google or several blog search engines. But the president’s voice sounded weak, he slurred more words than he has in years, and he looked physically ill. His manner could also be read as mentally unbalanced, even paranoid. Maybe he was just choking on too much crow, swallowing a nominee the Democrats can live with instead of spitting yet another conservative ideologue in their faces.

Of course, it might be that six years of duplicity and deception have finally taken their toll. But having a president paralyzed by guilt to the point of disability is really not in our best interests. The best option would still be for him to face reality, and move on. Today. Things will only get wackier if he makes us wait until 2009.

The Last Archbishop of Canterbury?

The cover story of the National Catholic Reporter’s 9/14/07 edition is “Anglican Schism? Archbishop Rowan Williams strives to preserve the communion.” With it is a sidebar, “The Anglican crisis in brief,” by the NCR staff. Links to the two articles:

http://www.ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2007c/091407/091407a.php
http://www.ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2007c/091407/091407h.php

The cover story was authored by John Wilkins, former editor of The Tablet, the British Catholic weekly. He shares valuable first-hand knowledge of the Anglican crisis as viewed from London, and of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s efforts to resolve it.

Both articles are helpful and thought-provoking, providing excellent historical background on how the Anglican Communion arrived at the crossroads its members now face—but also reinforcing my earlier conclusion that Williams is misguided in his compulsion to lead the Communion away from what has been its unique role among the Christian churches.

Once again, it appears that the only way Williams can envision saving the Communion is to capitulate to a group of Anglican biblical fundamentalists determined to turn it into something else. In so doing, the current shepherd of Augustine’s see risks becoming the last Archbishop of Canterbury, at least as that office has functioned historically. For centuries his office has upheld and embodied an ecclesiology available nowhere else within Christianity. If the Christians of the Anglican Communion allow it to be lost, is there any Christian body that can revive it?

The irony is that as a theologian, Williams knows better. He is largely in sympathy with those in the U.S. Episcopal Church who see the blessing of same-sex couples and the ordination of openly gay bishops as (paraphrasing John Wilkins) legitimate prophetic actions in the cause of justice and human rights. Wilkins reports that “As a theologian in the 1980s Williams himself was one of those questioning the Christian tradition on homosexuality.”

Having done that scholarship personally, Williams is in a better position than many Anglican bishops (and most Catholic bishops) to know that the anti-gay position taken by Archbishop Peter Akinola and others of the ‘Global South’ is bogus: the univocal scriptural grounding that it claims does not in fact exist; and the litmus test of orthodoxy that it tries to impose on the U.S. Episcopal bishops is not orthodox at all.

Wilkins says that despite this, Williams believes he must suppress his own scholarship and that of other reputable Christian theologians, because (he quotes Williams) “‘there are no arguments that are winning the majority of Christendom over to a new position’ that would amend or reverse the consistently negative Christian tradition on homosexual practice. He distinguishes sharply between questions a theologian may ask and actions or decisions a church or a bishop may take.”

Williams may be right about “the majority of Christendom.” Although there are secular majorities and other Christian churches, mainly in North America and Western Europe, who have in fact adopted the new position, the preponderance of Christians and Christian officials worldwide probably has not.

But is that an adequate reason to forbid a self-governing Anglican province like the U.S. Episcopal Church from adopting the new position? And, just as crucially for Anglican ecclesiology, is it an adequate reason to allow the Nigerian Province and its affiliates among ‘Global South’ bishops to mandate allegiance to the lie that the new position lacks a basis in solid, conscientious biblical analysis?

For the sake of the truth and the continuation of the Anglican Communion, what the Archbishop of Canterbury needs to be upholding is the right of an Anglican Province to follow a position which is scripturally defendable. He has in fact done this on the issue of ordaining women as priests and bishops, even though some of the same biblical fundamentalists assert that the Bible forbids such ordinations. Why does he not see the same principle at stake in the Episcopal Church’s desire to bless gay unions and gay bishops?

It is entirely likely that, if Williams did support the Episcopal Church, the bishops of the ‘Global South’ would accuse him of heresy, declare the Communion over and establish their own orthodox church with Akinola as presiding bishop (or pontiff, perhaps?). But in that case, it would be Akinola and company who had left the Communion. A remnant of the Communion and of Anglican ecclesiology would still survive.

That remnant would remain in Communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who would continue to uphold the right of self-governing Anglican provinces to pursue diverse, scripturally valid theologies. Yes, this would be a smaller Anglican Communion than Williams inherited. But it would remain a truly Anglican Communion, and “not just the loosest possible federation of local churches” that Williams fears.

Whatever Williams does, Akinola’s campaign to discredit the U.S. Episcopal Church, and to some extent the Archbishop of Canterbury, has already diminished the Anglican Communion. Rather than cower before Akinola’s relentless, fanatical brow-beating, Williams needs to gather the courage of his own scholarship and his own impressive spirituality, and go all out to keep Anglican ecclesiology alive.

Wilkins says that when Williams finds the controversy “eroding and exhausting,” he gains comfort and hope from the prayerful community in which he lives at Lambeth Palace: “Every morning … I have an opportunity to remind myself that what matters is not the Church of England or the Anglican Communion but the act of God in Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world. When I am inclined to think that the whole thing is falling apart and that I am making a more than usually bad job of it, the transforming thing has got to be, and in my experience always is, renewing a sense of gratitude. Whether the Church of England survives or not, whether the archbishop of Canterbury survives or not, Christ still died on the cross and rose again, and that’s enough to keep you going for quite a few lifetimes.”

The Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury deserve to survive, and Anglican ecclesiology with them. But that is possible only if Rowan Williams dedicates himself to pursuing and upholding what he knows to be true. Trying to pacify those who preach falsehood can have no good outcome. In doing so, he risks dooming his heritage and leaving a legacy of ashes.

Hurricane Humberto Sets a New Record!

Houston dodged a storm that might have stalled over most of its metro area, dumping as much as 10-15 inches of rain in some locales, already saturated by our wettest summer since 1942. Instead, Tropical Storm Humberto moved up the coast, strengthened to a Category 1 hurricane, and came ashore in the vicinity of Beaumont-Port Arthur, virtually the same area as Hurricane Rita two years ago. The only impact closer to Houston was in areas from Port Bolivar and Crystal Beach to High Island.

In the National Hurricane Center's 11:00 a.m. update today of its discussion of Hurricane Humberto, "Forecaster Franklin" may be the first to note that in its own unique way Humberto set a new record: its wind speed increased by 45 knots in 18 hours. The forecaster continues: "TO PUT THIS DEVELOPMENT IN PERSPECTIVE...NO TROPICAL CYCLONE IN THE HISTORICAL RECORD HAS EVER REACHED THIS INTENSITY AT A FASTER RATE NEAR LANDFALL."

He adds sardonically, "IT WOULD BE NICE TO KNOW ... SOMEDAY ... WHY THIS HAPPENED."

Perhaps as other experts take note of what he observed, someone will find the answer.

The full text of Forecaster Franklin's update is at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2007/al09/al092007.discus.006.shtml?

Note: A subsequent AP article identified James Franklin as senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center and translated the record wind speed increase from 45 knots to 50 mph, i.e., from 35 mph to 85 mph in 18 hours.

Papal Triumphalism: Another Last Gasp of Catholic Dogmatism

In the cover story of the National Catholic Reporter’s print edition August 31st columnist John L. Allen Jr. characterized the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI as “The Triumph of Evangelical Catholicism.”

The article is at http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2007c/083107/083107a.php

While Allen usually is a keen observer of all things Vatican, I think labeling Catholicism since 1978 (the election of JP2) 'evangelical' is mistaken in several ways. A more accurate description of the period is another last gasp of Catholic dogmatism.

One quibble is with use of the term ‘triumph.’ However we characterize the policies of the last two popes, should we be so quick to concede them lasting dominance?

Allen’s sidebar, “Liberal Catholicism endures in pastoral church,” quotes Richard Gaillardetz, a theologian at the University of Toledo, Ohio. Gaillardetz argues that in the U.S. Vatican II’s theology remains “a pastoral phenomenon…alive in parishes that have a flourishing catechumenate, vibrant liturgies, thoughtful and relevant preaching, and multiple lay ministerial opportunities,” as well as “in a growing number of intentional Christian communities that are determined to keep alive a vision of the church that they associate with Vatican II.” This suggests that the most involved U.S. Catholics have not assented to attempts by the last two popes to reverse Vatican II.

Both articles agree that those Allen dubs Catholic evangelicals are still a minority in the church, albeit an energetic and vocal one. The sidebar also notes a 2005 survey by William d’Antonio, James D. Davidson, Dean R. Hoge and Mary L. Gautier, which found that it was U.S. Catholics 65 or older who agreed most fervently that the Catholic church has “more truth” than other religions (61%, as opposed to 43% of those 26 or younger). This suggests enthusiasm for the papal position among a segment of the Catholic laity who were always fearful of Vatican II’s changes and who long for the self-deceptive certainty of an earlier Catholicism. Triumphalism, yes; but not exactly a church-wide triumph.

What can be said is that the last two popes have been successful at appealing to this segment of the laity and at re-populating the ranks of bishops and cardinals (the bishops who elect the pope) with like-minded theological neanderthals. Given their dedicated fanaticism, papal thinking is clearly in charge of the official church. It will take a fluke like the election of Pope John XXIII, who convoked Vatican II, to reverse that. But should we rush to conclude that the Spirit who shook up the church in the 1950s and 60s is incapable of doing so again?

My largest concern, though, is to resist applying the label ‘evangelical’ to recent papal thinking and its adherents. Only by giving ‘evangelical’ a novel Catholic meaning it never had before can Allen make the label work. But his usage so evacuates the term of its normal content that it confuses rather than clarifies the enormous reversal the last two popes have tried to pull off.

Papal thinking is clearly not evangelical in three of the four senses Allen ascribes to Protestants: “the Bible alone as the touchstone of faith, …personal acceptance of Jesus as opposed to salvation through externals such as sacraments, and strong missionary energies premised on the idea that salvation comes only from Christ.”

The traditional Catholic emphasis, which the recent popes consciously seek to revive, is that the Bible is normative only as interpreted by the official church, valid sacraments make Catholicism the only true church because other ecclesial communities lack them, and there is no salvation that is not mediated by the Catholic church.

Again, this is the Catholic triumphalism which prevailed from the Counter-Reformation through the 1950s. Allen tries to call the papal return to it ‘evangelical.’ But he can do this only by saying that the Catholic evangelical agenda hinges on “authority, the centrality of key doctrines, and Christian exclusivity.” I agree that these are among the chief preoccupations of JP2, Benedict XVI and their loyalists. But their project is to revive the Catholic dogmatism which Vatican II rejected and relativized. Why on earth call that project ‘evangelical’?

Calling the papal policies ‘Catholic fundamentalism’ would be more accurate, but Allen eschews that label—on the grounds that Benedict recently jettisoned limbo! This rationale is amusing, but misplaced. Despite its prevalence in Roman catechisms, limbo was never an official component of Catholic dogmatism. By focusing on a peripheral theological hypothesis that Benedict termed obsolete, Allen takes the spotlight away from the long list of surpassed dogmas that the last two popes have tried to reassert.

Their efforts are fundamentalist in the same sense as those of the evangelical right in the United States—except that they want to be fundamentalistic about the authority of the pope rather than the authority of selected biblical passages that conform to their ideology.

The bishops at Vatican II grasped what Alfred North Whitehead concluded emphatically in his philosophical work in the 1920s and 30s: religion cannot be sustained by resorting to ‘the dogmatic fallacy,’ the belief by any system of thought that “the principles of its working hypotheses are clear, obvious, and irreformable.” Because reality is always growing and our generalizations about it are always partial, Whitehead denied that such finality was ever possible.

In dozens of areas of Catholic belief and practice, the bishops of Vatican II agreed. Confident that they were responding to the deepest urgings of God’s Spirit, they agreed with Luther that Christianity’s defining characteristics—its teachings, its liturgy, its structures—must be semper reformanda, always subject to change, based on the endless interplay of scripture, tradition and contemporary experience.

It is this philosophical and evangelical conviction that John Paul II and Benedict XVI have energetically opposed. To call their approach ‘evangelical’ is to distort the term, and to radically mischaracterize the harm they have done. As a struggle against the creative advance of reality as a whole and Christianity in particular, it cannot ultimately succeed. Let’s not give it sham credibility by diluting and cheapening what ‘evangelical’ means.