Weighing in on the felony conviction of Irwin Lewis “Scooter” Libby, formerly his Chief of Staff at the rogue federal agency he has made of the vice presidency, Dick Cheney has burped up yet another instance of his dominant approach to politics and to life: reality is what I say it is.
Again drooling bile from both sides of his crooked smirk, Cheney told an interviewer that he supported George W. Bush’s decision to commute the jail portion of Libby’s sentence for perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to federal investigators—but that, contrary to Bush’s public remarks, he disagreed that the jury should have convicted Libby of any crime.
The importance of the Libby conviction is that a jury was persuaded to hold one of the most powerful officials of the Bush White House accountable for violating at least some of the laws they swore an oath to uphold.
That was a first. Until the Libby verdict, powerful officials including Cheney, Bush and their top lieutenants, had been able to violate several such laws with impunity. This was the first time a jury of their peers had a chance to draw the line. And they did.
Not that Libby’s was the worst violation. And certainly there were more immediate players who should have been prosecuted for intentionally blowing Valerie Plame’s 20-year CIA cover to conceal lies about their rationale for invading Iraq. Cheney, Karl Rove and Richard Armitage were all involved earlier and more extensively than Libby was. And the Special Prosecutor never gave an adequate public accounting for not pursuing them.
But at least the conviction sends a message to Bush-Cheney & Company that there can be criminal sanctions when they violate criminal statutes.
Previous juries sent a similar message to the Reagan administration when they convicted John Poindexter and Oliver North for their crimes during the Iran-Contra affair. Unfortunately, the message was muted when an appeals court overturned the convictions because their prior testimony before Congress might have compromised their 5th Amendment rights at trial.
George W’s commutation of Libby’s jail time at least leaves the message intact. Several legal scholars argued in op-ed pieces after the sentencing that 30 months of jail time, while within the mandatory sentencing guidelines that Republicans normally cheer, unfairly made Libby the fall guy for too many others who deserved to be in cells. By retaining the substantial fine and the other non-jail penalties of the sentence, Bush at least gave token acknowledgment that the president and his aides are not exempt from the criminal justice system.
That, of course, is too much for neocon true believers to abide. By challenging Libby’s conviction, Cheney at once panders to their belief that the law applies to commoners but not to them, bolsters that belief with his raw political power, and tempts Bush to renege on his own oath of office in order to keep all of his operatives immune from prosecution, no matter how many criminal laws they break.
As former Vice President Walter Mondale notes in an op-ed piece published today, this is par for the course for Cheney. Mondale argues that the vice presidency was a constitutional afterthought. Aside from providing a president-in-reserve and a presider for the Senate, the vice president has no authority except that which the president delegates to him. Bush has allowed Cheney to create a secret, largely independent power center, restricting the questions Bush will see to those decided by Cheney’s staff, pursuing Cheney’s separate agenda, accountable neither to Bush nor Congress. Bush could do himself and the country a huge favor by putting a stop to Cheney before his antics get any worse.
Desperate for any legacy beyond his “reign of error” (as columnist Paul Krugman dubs his presidency to date), maybe George W. will not cave. But his track record gives little reason to hope.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Catholics’ Quandry: Will Latin Masses Be Liturgy or Idolatry?
On May 4, 2007 I posted some thoughts on Rome’s plan to allow more Latin Masses. Theologically, the conclusions remain sound:
“Greater availability of the Latin Mass cannot be used to absolutize it or any version of the eucharistic liturgy. But it can be the occasion to remember again that alternatives to the normative language can be a healthy expression of religious humility and devotion—and that the alternatives should include not only older liturgies that have been replaced but also authorized experiments that can lead eventually to surpassing the liturgies that are normative today.”
The guidelines and cover letter made public at the Vatican July 7th include several statements which bolster my conclusions. I’ll gladly highlight them here.
However, other statements and omissions in those documents—and, just days later, Rome’s new pronouncement trying to back-pedal significantly on Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism (see my post of July 12th)—have changed the context in which sound theology must compete.
Whether sound theology prevails, or something else, ultimately will be determined by the decisions, assertiveness and perseverance of Catholic communities over the next few years—and whether theologians and church officials are responsive them or to a minority cult which wants to deny that Vatican II ever happened.
My position is bolstered above all by Benedict XVI’s stand that what has been characterized historically as the Roman Rite for celebrating the eucharist has included a multiplicity of usages, expressions and forms. This is critical to the assertion that no one version of the eucharistic liturgy—past, present or future—can be absolutized.
The pope regards the post-Vatican II eucharistic prayers issued by Pope Paul VI in 1970, “translated into the various languages of the world,” as normative. The English texts of his documents refer to them variously as the eucharistic liturgy’s normal form, forma ordinaria, and ordinary expression.
I have not seen it mentioned elsewhere, but he is so serious about this that he forbids priests and communities who prefer the old Latin Mass from refusing to celebrate the 1970 versions.
He says in his cover letter: “Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, also the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness.”
This is a blow to those adherents of the 1962 ritual who claim, without theological basis, that it and its different liturgical calendar and church-sanctuary architecture, constitute the only valid Catholic liturgy, to which all others must conform.
(I had focused previously on the normativity of the four eucharistic prayers published in 1970. An article, “Opinion Divided on Mass Decision,” in the print edition of the National Catholic Reporter dated July 20, 2007, reminds us that there are more. Sacred Heart Sister Kathleen Hughes, a scholar in residence at the Collegeville Institute at St. John’s University in Minnesota, counts nine official prayers. These include two additional ones for masses of reconciliation and three for children. A eucharistic prayer website that I have recently linked to here even counts 13 eucharistic prayers, by including four more official prayers for various needs. Actually the four share lots of common sentences, but with four variable prefaces and four variable prayers of intercession. At any rate, all this further diminishes the importance of the 1962 ritual relative to the normative ones.)
To stress that the Roman Rite has always involved a multiplicity of expressions, Benedict cites liturgical reforms by Popes Gregory the Great and Pius V in prior centuries, and in the 20th Century by Popes Clement VIII, Urban VIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XII, John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council.
He calls the 1962 Latin Mass a forma extraordinaria or an extraordinary form of the liturgical celebration, “one of the liturgical books of the Roman Rite” (italics mine). Extraordinary here does not mean superior, better than ordinary, or the best. It means unusual, out of the ordinary, infrequent. Note too the use of “a” and “an.” The Latin Mass is not THE extraordinary form of the liturgy, but one of several that can be so characterized.
Interestingly, the pope never says that a priest celebrating the 1962 Latin Mass has to have his back to the people. This is the way the Latin Mass was celebrated historically and the way proponents prefer it today. But in an explanatory note issued on July 9th, the Holy See Press Office observed, “The 1962 Missal…says nothing concerning the direction of the altar or of the celebrant (whether facing the people or not).” This is not the kind of flexibility the most traditional Catholics want the priest to have. But it is in fact what the pope has decreed, and another indicator that the post-Vatican II liturgies remain normative.
It is instructive too that he never refers to the old Latin Mass as the Mass of St. Pius V—as the most traditional Catholics do and would like him to do. He makes a point, repeatedly and consistently, of referring to “the Roman Missal published by Blessed John XXIII in 1962.” This puts emphasis on both the multiplicity of Roman liturgies and the church’s right to reform them, add to them, and diminish some in importance from time to time.
Despite these cogent, healthy remarks, there are other statements in the documents which are historically or linguistically inaccurate—and two topics the documents should not have ignored. If that is allowed to prevail, the documents will encourage an idolatry of the old Latin Mass, rather than liturgically sound worship of the living God.
One is the claim that the old Latin Mass and the 1970 eucharistic prayers are “two usages of the one Roman rite” or “a twofold use of one and the same rite.” Thus Benedict says, “In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us, too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” Yet the liturgy was reformed (and the old Latin version restricted) precisely because it reflected an inadequate theology of the church that sometimes did harm.
Like the pope’s recent claim that Vatican II made no change in the official understanding of the church, this one is preposterous. It tortures fact and language. Yes, the 1962 Latin Mass and the 13 normative eucharistic prayers have some characteristics in common. But they also have many significant differences. Only a self-serving nominalism (“reality is what I say it is”) can justify insisting that the Roman Rite is identical in all of its forms. By trying to do so, the pope encourages those who want everyone to revere the 1962 version as THE Roman ritual.
Related are the provisions that pastors may also use the 1962 Missal version to administer the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, Penance and Anointing of the Sick, instead of the post-Vatican II versions, and also to bury the dead. Allowing these parallel sacraments plays down the multiple models of church that Vatican II officially endorsed, and it disputes Vatican II’s overwhelming judgment that the monolithic view of church in the 1962 Missal was in need of reform.
In contrast to this, Kathleen Hughes notes in the same NCR article the many advantages of the newer sacramental practices: “the variety of patterns of reconciliation, the rediscovered unity and order of the sacraments of initiation, and the recovery of the sacrament of the sick for those who are seriously ill though not at the point of death.” In contrast to the doom and gloom of old Catholic funerals, she also cites "the revised funeral rite which includes different texts for those who die as infants or in old age, those who die by suicide or violence, or after a long and suffering affliction."
There is also a widespread concern that the documents weaken the local bishop’s authority over the liturgy, in favor of centralized decision-making by Rome. In his cover letter, the pope specifically denies doing that. Yet the guidelines say that groups of the faithful who cannot find a pastor who’ll provide the 1962 Latin Mass, should inform their local bishop. The guidelines then say, “If he cannot arrange for such celebration to take place, the matter should be referred to the Pontifical Commission 'Ecclesia Dei.'”
The guidelines do not say who does the referring. But several press accounts have already assumed it could be the aggrieved laity, and not necessarily the bishop.
The document also does not say what rules the Pontifical Commission will use to address the matter. The danger is that the local bishop will no longer have the last word. This could be especially troublesome if the bishop felt the need to deny the Latin Mass to a particular group of worshippers because they were making it the end-all and be-all of Catholic liturgy, or insisting that their priest never celebrate a different eucharistic prayer. It would be an abuse of authority for the Pontifical Commission to overrule the bishop in such circumstances.
Then there is the documents’ total silence on two significant issues.
First, the documents do not address how parts of the 1962 Roman Missal seriously offend Jews. They told Benedict while the documents were in preparation that they found the Missal’s Good Friday prayers calling for Jews “to be delivered from their darkness” and converted to Catholicism a slap in the face, at odds with decades of Jewish-Catholic dialogue and conciliatory statements from several popes. And yet there was nothing in the cover letter or the press office clarification to acknowledge the legitimacy of their concerns, let alone speak to them.
The guidelines have an odd provision that might limit the harm of the Good Friday language. But it’s hard to tell if that was the intent, or just a happy accident. It says that priests who celebrate the liturgy without the people present may follow the 1962 Missal except during the Easter Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday). A related provision says people who ask may be admitted to such liturgies—which would rule out the Missal’s Good Friday liturgy for them. But the more lengthy provisions on liturgies normally celebrated with the people present make so such distinction, and it seems to be the pope’s intent that laity who can have the Latin Mass can also have the 1962 Good Friday liturgy. Since it is normally a single service between noon and 3:00 p.m., how an individual parish would handle the mechanics of two simultaneous Good Friday liturgies is difficult to envision.
Second, the documents give very short shrift to the value of additional liturgical novelty. It is arguable that the 13 eucharistic prayers which are normative today would not have come about without considerable experimentation in controlled settings in the years leading up to Vatican II and just after it. The pope’s only reference to such creativity is pejorative.
He says that some of the traditionalists’ opposition to the new eucharistic prayers arose “because in many places celebrations were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new missal, but the latter actually was understood as authorizing or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear. I am speaking from experience, since I, too, lived through that period with all its hopes and its confusion.” Of course, the traditionalists were not offended by such liturgies from attending them. They based their antagonism on second-hand reports, and their only interest was in portraying liturgical innovation as the bad fruit of Vatican II's misguided reforms.
At least Benedict does not claim that experimentation always led to deformations of the liturgy! In fact, as I noted in my May 4th post, creativity was allowed for a period of time after Vatican II, when liturgical experts offered experimental eucharistic prayers that followed the structure of the approved ones but offered language and rituals that many small congregations found more beautiful and more inspirational than the official language. Short of relying exclusively on non-Catholic Christians for liturgical innovation, there is no other way for the Catholic Church to improve upon the liturgy presently in place.
By relativizing the importance of the Latin Mass that used to be normative, Rome must realize sooner or later that the current normative liturgies must also be open to future revision. God and his worship cannot be frozen in any single ritual henceforth and forever. To forget that is to worship ritual rather than God.
That is the continuing lesson of the church’s liturgical history—a lesson which Vatican II learned very well, but which church officials since keep trying to forget. Whether they get it sooner rather than later is up to thousands of believers, around the globe.
“Greater availability of the Latin Mass cannot be used to absolutize it or any version of the eucharistic liturgy. But it can be the occasion to remember again that alternatives to the normative language can be a healthy expression of religious humility and devotion—and that the alternatives should include not only older liturgies that have been replaced but also authorized experiments that can lead eventually to surpassing the liturgies that are normative today.”
The guidelines and cover letter made public at the Vatican July 7th include several statements which bolster my conclusions. I’ll gladly highlight them here.
However, other statements and omissions in those documents—and, just days later, Rome’s new pronouncement trying to back-pedal significantly on Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism (see my post of July 12th)—have changed the context in which sound theology must compete.
Whether sound theology prevails, or something else, ultimately will be determined by the decisions, assertiveness and perseverance of Catholic communities over the next few years—and whether theologians and church officials are responsive them or to a minority cult which wants to deny that Vatican II ever happened.
My position is bolstered above all by Benedict XVI’s stand that what has been characterized historically as the Roman Rite for celebrating the eucharist has included a multiplicity of usages, expressions and forms. This is critical to the assertion that no one version of the eucharistic liturgy—past, present or future—can be absolutized.
The pope regards the post-Vatican II eucharistic prayers issued by Pope Paul VI in 1970, “translated into the various languages of the world,” as normative. The English texts of his documents refer to them variously as the eucharistic liturgy’s normal form, forma ordinaria, and ordinary expression.
I have not seen it mentioned elsewhere, but he is so serious about this that he forbids priests and communities who prefer the old Latin Mass from refusing to celebrate the 1970 versions.
He says in his cover letter: “Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, also the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness.”
This is a blow to those adherents of the 1962 ritual who claim, without theological basis, that it and its different liturgical calendar and church-sanctuary architecture, constitute the only valid Catholic liturgy, to which all others must conform.
(I had focused previously on the normativity of the four eucharistic prayers published in 1970. An article, “Opinion Divided on Mass Decision,” in the print edition of the National Catholic Reporter dated July 20, 2007, reminds us that there are more. Sacred Heart Sister Kathleen Hughes, a scholar in residence at the Collegeville Institute at St. John’s University in Minnesota, counts nine official prayers. These include two additional ones for masses of reconciliation and three for children. A eucharistic prayer website that I have recently linked to here even counts 13 eucharistic prayers, by including four more official prayers for various needs. Actually the four share lots of common sentences, but with four variable prefaces and four variable prayers of intercession. At any rate, all this further diminishes the importance of the 1962 ritual relative to the normative ones.)
To stress that the Roman Rite has always involved a multiplicity of expressions, Benedict cites liturgical reforms by Popes Gregory the Great and Pius V in prior centuries, and in the 20th Century by Popes Clement VIII, Urban VIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XII, John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council.
He calls the 1962 Latin Mass a forma extraordinaria or an extraordinary form of the liturgical celebration, “one of the liturgical books of the Roman Rite” (italics mine). Extraordinary here does not mean superior, better than ordinary, or the best. It means unusual, out of the ordinary, infrequent. Note too the use of “a” and “an.” The Latin Mass is not THE extraordinary form of the liturgy, but one of several that can be so characterized.
Interestingly, the pope never says that a priest celebrating the 1962 Latin Mass has to have his back to the people. This is the way the Latin Mass was celebrated historically and the way proponents prefer it today. But in an explanatory note issued on July 9th, the Holy See Press Office observed, “The 1962 Missal…says nothing concerning the direction of the altar or of the celebrant (whether facing the people or not).” This is not the kind of flexibility the most traditional Catholics want the priest to have. But it is in fact what the pope has decreed, and another indicator that the post-Vatican II liturgies remain normative.
It is instructive too that he never refers to the old Latin Mass as the Mass of St. Pius V—as the most traditional Catholics do and would like him to do. He makes a point, repeatedly and consistently, of referring to “the Roman Missal published by Blessed John XXIII in 1962.” This puts emphasis on both the multiplicity of Roman liturgies and the church’s right to reform them, add to them, and diminish some in importance from time to time.
Despite these cogent, healthy remarks, there are other statements in the documents which are historically or linguistically inaccurate—and two topics the documents should not have ignored. If that is allowed to prevail, the documents will encourage an idolatry of the old Latin Mass, rather than liturgically sound worship of the living God.
One is the claim that the old Latin Mass and the 1970 eucharistic prayers are “two usages of the one Roman rite” or “a twofold use of one and the same rite.” Thus Benedict says, “In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us, too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” Yet the liturgy was reformed (and the old Latin version restricted) precisely because it reflected an inadequate theology of the church that sometimes did harm.
Like the pope’s recent claim that Vatican II made no change in the official understanding of the church, this one is preposterous. It tortures fact and language. Yes, the 1962 Latin Mass and the 13 normative eucharistic prayers have some characteristics in common. But they also have many significant differences. Only a self-serving nominalism (“reality is what I say it is”) can justify insisting that the Roman Rite is identical in all of its forms. By trying to do so, the pope encourages those who want everyone to revere the 1962 version as THE Roman ritual.
Related are the provisions that pastors may also use the 1962 Missal version to administer the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, Penance and Anointing of the Sick, instead of the post-Vatican II versions, and also to bury the dead. Allowing these parallel sacraments plays down the multiple models of church that Vatican II officially endorsed, and it disputes Vatican II’s overwhelming judgment that the monolithic view of church in the 1962 Missal was in need of reform.
In contrast to this, Kathleen Hughes notes in the same NCR article the many advantages of the newer sacramental practices: “the variety of patterns of reconciliation, the rediscovered unity and order of the sacraments of initiation, and the recovery of the sacrament of the sick for those who are seriously ill though not at the point of death.” In contrast to the doom and gloom of old Catholic funerals, she also cites "the revised funeral rite which includes different texts for those who die as infants or in old age, those who die by suicide or violence, or after a long and suffering affliction."
There is also a widespread concern that the documents weaken the local bishop’s authority over the liturgy, in favor of centralized decision-making by Rome. In his cover letter, the pope specifically denies doing that. Yet the guidelines say that groups of the faithful who cannot find a pastor who’ll provide the 1962 Latin Mass, should inform their local bishop. The guidelines then say, “If he cannot arrange for such celebration to take place, the matter should be referred to the Pontifical Commission 'Ecclesia Dei.'”
The guidelines do not say who does the referring. But several press accounts have already assumed it could be the aggrieved laity, and not necessarily the bishop.
The document also does not say what rules the Pontifical Commission will use to address the matter. The danger is that the local bishop will no longer have the last word. This could be especially troublesome if the bishop felt the need to deny the Latin Mass to a particular group of worshippers because they were making it the end-all and be-all of Catholic liturgy, or insisting that their priest never celebrate a different eucharistic prayer. It would be an abuse of authority for the Pontifical Commission to overrule the bishop in such circumstances.
Then there is the documents’ total silence on two significant issues.
First, the documents do not address how parts of the 1962 Roman Missal seriously offend Jews. They told Benedict while the documents were in preparation that they found the Missal’s Good Friday prayers calling for Jews “to be delivered from their darkness” and converted to Catholicism a slap in the face, at odds with decades of Jewish-Catholic dialogue and conciliatory statements from several popes. And yet there was nothing in the cover letter or the press office clarification to acknowledge the legitimacy of their concerns, let alone speak to them.
The guidelines have an odd provision that might limit the harm of the Good Friday language. But it’s hard to tell if that was the intent, or just a happy accident. It says that priests who celebrate the liturgy without the people present may follow the 1962 Missal except during the Easter Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday). A related provision says people who ask may be admitted to such liturgies—which would rule out the Missal’s Good Friday liturgy for them. But the more lengthy provisions on liturgies normally celebrated with the people present make so such distinction, and it seems to be the pope’s intent that laity who can have the Latin Mass can also have the 1962 Good Friday liturgy. Since it is normally a single service between noon and 3:00 p.m., how an individual parish would handle the mechanics of two simultaneous Good Friday liturgies is difficult to envision.
Second, the documents give very short shrift to the value of additional liturgical novelty. It is arguable that the 13 eucharistic prayers which are normative today would not have come about without considerable experimentation in controlled settings in the years leading up to Vatican II and just after it. The pope’s only reference to such creativity is pejorative.
He says that some of the traditionalists’ opposition to the new eucharistic prayers arose “because in many places celebrations were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new missal, but the latter actually was understood as authorizing or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear. I am speaking from experience, since I, too, lived through that period with all its hopes and its confusion.” Of course, the traditionalists were not offended by such liturgies from attending them. They based their antagonism on second-hand reports, and their only interest was in portraying liturgical innovation as the bad fruit of Vatican II's misguided reforms.
At least Benedict does not claim that experimentation always led to deformations of the liturgy! In fact, as I noted in my May 4th post, creativity was allowed for a period of time after Vatican II, when liturgical experts offered experimental eucharistic prayers that followed the structure of the approved ones but offered language and rituals that many small congregations found more beautiful and more inspirational than the official language. Short of relying exclusively on non-Catholic Christians for liturgical innovation, there is no other way for the Catholic Church to improve upon the liturgy presently in place.
By relativizing the importance of the Latin Mass that used to be normative, Rome must realize sooner or later that the current normative liturgies must also be open to future revision. God and his worship cannot be frozen in any single ritual henceforth and forever. To forget that is to worship ritual rather than God.
That is the continuing lesson of the church’s liturgical history—a lesson which Vatican II learned very well, but which church officials since keep trying to forget. Whether they get it sooner rather than later is up to thousands of believers, around the globe.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
We Must Say To Iraq: If You Go on Vacation, Stay on Vacation
NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who has been consistently right about Iraq from day one, finds it outrageous that U.S. soldiers will be sweltering in Baghdad's 130-degree August heat — so that the Iraqi parilament can be on holiday!
In his syndicated column published today, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner writes:
"So let’s get this straight: Iraqi parliamentarians, at least those not already boycotting the parliament, will be on vacation in August so they can be cool, while young American men and women, and Iraqi Army soldiers, will be fighting in the heat in order to create a proper security environment in which Iraqi politicians can come back in September and continue squabbling while their country burns.
"Here is what I think of that: I think it’s a travesty — and for the Bush White House to excuse it with a Baghdad weather report shows just how much it has become a hostage to Iraq."
In the last paragraphs of his column, Friedman says that Iraq needs to decide — NOW — on one of three choices: either oil- and power-sharing; ethnic partition supervised internationally; or immediate pull-back of U.S. troops to the Iraqi border. He blames President Bush for not forcing the Iraqis to make this choice sooner.
True enough. But Bush's malfeasance does not excuse self-serving Iraqi "leaders" twidling in indecision while larger chunks of their homeland explode and thousands more die.
If Iraq's parliament goes on vacation, they have made their choice. At that juncture we need to accelerate Friedman's conclusion: "We owe our soldiers a ticket home."
I quote Friedman's closing paragraphs below. The complete column is posted at http://greenpagan.blogspot.com
"President Bush baffles me. If your whole legacy was riding on Iraq, what would you do?
"I’d draft the country’s best negotiators — Henry Kissinger, Jim Baker, George Shultz, George Mitchell, Dennis Ross or Richard Holbrooke — and ask one or all of them to go to Baghdad, under a U.N. mandate, with the following orders:
"'I want you to move to the Green Zone, meet with the Iraqi factions and do not come home until you’ve reached one of three conclusions: 1) You have resolved the power- and oil-sharing issues holding up political reconciliation; 2) you have concluded that those obstacles are insurmountable and have sold the Iraqis on a partition plan that could be presented to the U.N. and supervised by an international force; 3) you have concluded that Iraqis are incapable of agreeing on either political reconciliation or a partition plan and told them that, as a result, the U.S. has no choice but to re-deploy its troops to the border and let Iraqis sort this out on their own.'
"The last point is crucial. Any lawyer will tell you, if you’re negotiating a contract and the other side thinks you’ll never walk away, you’ve got no leverage. And in Iraq, we’ve never had any leverage. The Iraqis believe that Mr. Bush will never walk away, so they have no incentive to make painful compromises.
"That’s why the Iraqi parliament is on vacation in August and our soldiers are fighting in the heat. Something is wrong with this picture. First, Mr. Bush spends three years denying the reality that we need a surge of more troops to establish security and then, with Iraq spinning totally out of control and militias taking root everywhere, he announces a surge and criticizes others for being impatient.
"At the same time, Mr. Bush announces a peace conference for Israelis and Palestinians — but not for Iraqis. He’s like a man trapped in a burning house who calls 911 to put out the brush fire down the street. Hello?
"Quitting Iraq would be morally and strategically devastating. But to just drag out the surge, with no road map for a political endgame, with Iraqi lawmakers going on vacation, with no consequences for dithering, would be just as morally and strategically irresponsible.
"We owe Iraqis our best military — and diplomatic effort — to avoid the disaster of walking away.
"But if they won't take advantage of that, we owe our soldiers a ticket home."
In his syndicated column published today, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner writes:
"So let’s get this straight: Iraqi parliamentarians, at least those not already boycotting the parliament, will be on vacation in August so they can be cool, while young American men and women, and Iraqi Army soldiers, will be fighting in the heat in order to create a proper security environment in which Iraqi politicians can come back in September and continue squabbling while their country burns.
"Here is what I think of that: I think it’s a travesty — and for the Bush White House to excuse it with a Baghdad weather report shows just how much it has become a hostage to Iraq."
In the last paragraphs of his column, Friedman says that Iraq needs to decide — NOW — on one of three choices: either oil- and power-sharing; ethnic partition supervised internationally; or immediate pull-back of U.S. troops to the Iraqi border. He blames President Bush for not forcing the Iraqis to make this choice sooner.
True enough. But Bush's malfeasance does not excuse self-serving Iraqi "leaders" twidling in indecision while larger chunks of their homeland explode and thousands more die.
If Iraq's parliament goes on vacation, they have made their choice. At that juncture we need to accelerate Friedman's conclusion: "We owe our soldiers a ticket home."
I quote Friedman's closing paragraphs below. The complete column is posted at http://greenpagan.blogspot.com
"President Bush baffles me. If your whole legacy was riding on Iraq, what would you do?
"I’d draft the country’s best negotiators — Henry Kissinger, Jim Baker, George Shultz, George Mitchell, Dennis Ross or Richard Holbrooke — and ask one or all of them to go to Baghdad, under a U.N. mandate, with the following orders:
"'I want you to move to the Green Zone, meet with the Iraqi factions and do not come home until you’ve reached one of three conclusions: 1) You have resolved the power- and oil-sharing issues holding up political reconciliation; 2) you have concluded that those obstacles are insurmountable and have sold the Iraqis on a partition plan that could be presented to the U.N. and supervised by an international force; 3) you have concluded that Iraqis are incapable of agreeing on either political reconciliation or a partition plan and told them that, as a result, the U.S. has no choice but to re-deploy its troops to the border and let Iraqis sort this out on their own.'
"The last point is crucial. Any lawyer will tell you, if you’re negotiating a contract and the other side thinks you’ll never walk away, you’ve got no leverage. And in Iraq, we’ve never had any leverage. The Iraqis believe that Mr. Bush will never walk away, so they have no incentive to make painful compromises.
"That’s why the Iraqi parliament is on vacation in August and our soldiers are fighting in the heat. Something is wrong with this picture. First, Mr. Bush spends three years denying the reality that we need a surge of more troops to establish security and then, with Iraq spinning totally out of control and militias taking root everywhere, he announces a surge and criticizes others for being impatient.
"At the same time, Mr. Bush announces a peace conference for Israelis and Palestinians — but not for Iraqis. He’s like a man trapped in a burning house who calls 911 to put out the brush fire down the street. Hello?
"Quitting Iraq would be morally and strategically devastating. But to just drag out the surge, with no road map for a political endgame, with Iraqi lawmakers going on vacation, with no consequences for dithering, would be just as morally and strategically irresponsible.
"We owe Iraqis our best military — and diplomatic effort — to avoid the disaster of walking away.
"But if they won't take advantage of that, we owe our soldiers a ticket home."
Friday, July 13, 2007
The World as Joseph Ratzinger's Classroom
Thanks to the Canadian blog Tomorrow's Trust for calling attention to the following, on the reassertion by Pope Benedict XVI that the Catholic Church is the only church of Christ. It sheds some light on why the pope's way of communicating is so often counter-productive.
The paragraphs are part of a longer article in the San Antonio Express News, posted at http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA071107.01A.Pope.3ab6b27.html
Father Thomas Reese, author of several books on how the Catholic hierarchy works, said that while the document isn't the death of ecumenism, "it certainly doesn't help."
The pope is "basically a German academic who defines the terms to be used in his classroom, and his students have to understand his definition of the terms," Reese said.
"Now, the whole world is his classroom, but he's defining terms in ways that the average people on the street don't get the meaning. Their interpretation is very insulting, and he doesn't seem concerned."
But Reese said the document may reflect a concern about Catholics who have begun to believe that it doesn't matter whether they attend Catholic or a non-Catholic churches.
He referred to a survey indicating that almost half the Catholics under age 40 feel just as comfortable in another church as in the Catholic Church.
"I think he's a lot more concerned about Catholics and their attitude toward the church than about people outside the Catholic Church," he said.
The paragraphs are part of a longer article in the San Antonio Express News, posted at http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA071107.01A.Pope.3ab6b27.html
Father Thomas Reese, author of several books on how the Catholic hierarchy works, said that while the document isn't the death of ecumenism, "it certainly doesn't help."
The pope is "basically a German academic who defines the terms to be used in his classroom, and his students have to understand his definition of the terms," Reese said.
"Now, the whole world is his classroom, but he's defining terms in ways that the average people on the street don't get the meaning. Their interpretation is very insulting, and he doesn't seem concerned."
But Reese said the document may reflect a concern about Catholics who have begun to believe that it doesn't matter whether they attend Catholic or a non-Catholic churches.
He referred to a survey indicating that almost half the Catholics under age 40 feel just as comfortable in another church as in the Catholic Church.
"I think he's a lot more concerned about Catholics and their attitude toward the church than about people outside the Catholic Church," he said.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Pope Maledict Strikes Again: Rome Is the Only Church of Christ!
Evidently we got it wrong. We thought Joseph Ratzinger chose Benedict as his papal name. Benedict as in the Latin Benedictus—literally, well spoken, but usually meaning well spoken of, praised, or blessed. So far with his papacy, we get none of the above. Instead we get Maledict, as in to curse or call evil upon.
The man with the shoes of Prada has not been a very good fit for the shoes of the Fisherman. And now we have a new episode of Prada-in-mouth disease.
Press reports are abuzz with the news that Pope Benedict XVI has approved a Vatican document returning to the pre-Vatican II position that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church of Christ.
The five-point document, in a condescending catechetical question-and-answer format, is really an extended tautology. It starts with the arbitrary assumption that the defining characteristics of “church” include apostolic succession, validly ordained priests to celebrate the eucharist, and communion with the bishop of Rome. Then it concludes that a Christian group lacking any of these characteristics is not a church. That leaves Roman Catholicism as the only church there is.
Thus the document’s punch line is that the churches which emerged from the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century are really not churches.
That’s bad enough. But on the way, and even more alarming from an ecumenical perspective, the document suggests that the Orthodox Churches (Greek and Slavic in origin) are not churches either, because they are not in communion with the bishop of Rome.
These positions are significant departures from the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on November 21, 1964.
As an effort among non-Catholic Christians to promote greater Christian unity, the ecumenical movement was roughly 50 years old at the time. The decree was intended to remove any question that the Catholic Church would join the ecumenical movement decisively, enthusiastically and productively. It was approved by 97% of the nearly 2,120 bishops in attendance.
The pope needs to explain where he gets the competence or authority to override the Council on these matters.
The document published yesterday is replete with oddities ripe for plucking:
It was not issued by the pope, but by Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (headed by Joseph Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI, and formerly known as the Holy Office and the Inquisition). However, the document says that Benedict ratified and confirmed the statements and ordered their publication.
According to press reports, the new document restates key sections of a 2000 text Ratzinger wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, which riled the other Christian churches at the time. Why the pope chose the start of his 2007 summer vacation to reissue his decree from 2000 is anybody’s guess.
The only theologian specifically referenced in the document—in a very convoluted discussion of what it means to say the church of Christ “subsists” in the Catholic Church—is Leonardo Boff, a proponent of Liberation Theology whom Ratzinger targeted in 1985. Boff subsequently left the priesthood, and no one has championed his position on this subject for years.
But the greatest curiosity is why Benedict XVI thinks he can arrogate to himself the power to contradict the clear ecumenical emphasis and positions of the bishops of the church at Vatican II.
The Decree on Ecumenism was initially drafted by the Secretariat for Christian Unity, established by Pope John XXIII in 1959 to be at the service of observers he asked the Orthodox and Protestant churches to send to the Council, and to coordinate the Council’s statement on ecumenism.
The bishops of the Council debated the document in three separate sessions from 1962 through 1964. They proposed over a thousand changes, which the secretariat reviewed. After feedback from the secretariat and voting on final changes, the bishops approved the resulting individual chapters of the decree.
The day before the vote on the decree as a whole, Pope Paul VI made 19 last-minute changes to the text, too late for the bishops to discuss or vote on individually. The bishops approved the entire decree with all of the 19 changes.
While the changes did not radically alter what the final draft said, as it turns out Benedict hangs a major component of his current stance on one of them. Yet even there Benedict is distorting what the Council said, as his current document does on each questions it addresses.
The document claims that Vatican II did not change the Catholic teaching on the church. On the face of it, this claim is preposterous. According to the English translators, the 16 promulgated documents of Vatican II include 103,014 words. The English translation (including introductions, footnotes and brief responses from observers who were invited to the Council), takes up nearly 750 pages. It is simply inconceivable that the bishops prepared for the council for four years, deliberated for three, and had nothing new to say about the church. In his Models of the Church, Cardinal Avery Dulles catalogues the competing descriptions of the church that have been held in tension since the Council.
The general editor of the English translation of the Vatican II documents noted that up to the Council, the Catholic Church prayed eight days each January for the Orthodox and Protestant churches to return to Rome. With the Decree on Ecumenism, the emphasis was on the pilgrim church moving toward Christ, rather than toward Rome.
Indeed, Benedict’s document even cites Pope John Paul II’s version of a point the Council stressed repeatedly: “…the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.” The Council’s version was that “…some, even very many, of the most significant elements or endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church herself can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church.”
Benedict also quotes another Council text favorably: “It follows that these separated churches and communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation. In fact the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value derives from that fullness of grace and truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church.”
Despite acknowledging these obvious changes in the Catholic attitude toward the other Christian churches, Benedict then reverts to pre-Vatican II positions which only an extreme minority at the Council ever supported and which the Council overruled in its final decrees.
Nowhere does Benedict’s document mention the Council’s acknowledgment that differences between Christians go all the way back to Peter and Paul—even though he ordered publication of his document on their ecumenically significant annual feast day.
Nowhere does Benedict’s document mention the Council’s judgment that blame for subsequent separations in the history of Christianity often belonged on both sides (which, ironically, he did note in his recent discussion about controversies related to the old Latin Mass).
Nowhere does Benedict’s document stress that the Council purposefully referred to the Orthodox bodies as churches, and never hinted that their lack of communion with Rome should prevent them from being designated as churches.
On the contrary, the Council noted that “from their very origins the Churches of the East have had a treasury from which the Church of the West has amply drawn for its liturgy, spiritual tradition and jurisprudence. Nor must we underestimate the fact that the basic dogmas of the Christian faith concerning the Trinity and God’s Word made flesh of the Virgin Mary were defined in Ecumenical Councils held in the East. To preserve this faith, these Churches have suffered much, and still do so.” The bishops concluded, “…this sacred Synod declares that this entire heritage of spirituality and liturgy, of discipline and theology, in their various traditions, belongs to the full catholic and apostolic character of the Church.”
Nowhere does Benedict’s document mention that in speaking of the Protestant Reformation the Council said, “…many Communions, national or denominational, were separated from the Roman See. Among those in which some Catholic traditions and institutions continue to exist, the Anglican Communion occupies a special place.” This should have led Benedict to at least assess the Anglican Communion in conjunction with his discussion of the Orthodox churches. But it did not.
It is true that the Council did make a distinction between churches and ecclesial communities. A footnote says the bishops’ thinking was that the more an institution has of the essential structures of the Catholicism, the more it is entitled to be called a church. The usage was also intended to be respectful and inclusive of some Christian bodies which do not wish to be called churches.
Yet the Decree on Ecumenism explicitly prescinded from categorizing specific Christian bodies as churches or ecclesial communities: “Since in origin, teaching and spiritual practice, these churches and ecclesial communities differ not only from us but also among themselves to a considerable degree, the task of describing them adequately is very difficult; we do not propose to do it here.”
One would never know this from Benedict’s analysis, which lumps together all of the Reformation churches without distinction, because they “do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church.”
This is the most complicated point to address, because it is impacted by one of Pope Paul VI’s last-minute additions. What the bishops said in the individual chapter they approved was that churches without a sacrament of orders lacked “the full reality of the Eucharistic mystery.” Their wording implied that the Reformed churches retained some of that reality. And while lack of fullness was their main criterion for calling them ecclesial communities rather than churches, their point was not to dwell on how exactly they were Christian bodies, but to call for more dialogue on “the true meaning of the Lord’s Supper, the other sacraments, and the Church’s worship and ministry.”
Pope Paul changed “the full reality of the Eucharistic mystery” to “genuinam atque integram substantiam Mysterii eucharistici.” To stay as close as possible to the bishops’ intent, the 1960s English translators rendered this to say that the Reformed churches lacked “the genuine and total reality of the Eucharistic mystery.”
Today’s Vatican translation is much harsher. Benedict now says they lack “the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery.” Although the text still leaves it as a situation calling for more dialogue about the eucharist and the sacraments, the implication is that the Reformed churches do not have a valid eucharist.
This tends to contradict the next sentence of the bishop’s language, which Paul VI did not remove: “Nevertheless, when they commemorate the Lord’s death and resurrection in the Holy Supper, they profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ, and they await his coming in glory.” Whatever Pope Paul VI intended to say, Benedict’s version is clearly a far cry from the final draft of the chapter which the Council approved.
Thus Benedict’s position rests on this complicated, shaky interpretation of a single sentence, coupled with ignoring other important statements which remained in the decree or twisting some beyond recognition. Given this, it is difficult to find any positive value in using the position to publicly assault the integrity and sincerity of Orthodox and Protestant followers of Jesus.
The Catholic Church officially abandoned malediction toward other Christians in 1964. The Catholic Church expects the pope to follow that official position. It would certainly be a better way for Benedict to live up to his name.
The man with the shoes of Prada has not been a very good fit for the shoes of the Fisherman. And now we have a new episode of Prada-in-mouth disease.
Press reports are abuzz with the news that Pope Benedict XVI has approved a Vatican document returning to the pre-Vatican II position that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church of Christ.
The five-point document, in a condescending catechetical question-and-answer format, is really an extended tautology. It starts with the arbitrary assumption that the defining characteristics of “church” include apostolic succession, validly ordained priests to celebrate the eucharist, and communion with the bishop of Rome. Then it concludes that a Christian group lacking any of these characteristics is not a church. That leaves Roman Catholicism as the only church there is.
Thus the document’s punch line is that the churches which emerged from the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century are really not churches.
That’s bad enough. But on the way, and even more alarming from an ecumenical perspective, the document suggests that the Orthodox Churches (Greek and Slavic in origin) are not churches either, because they are not in communion with the bishop of Rome.
These positions are significant departures from the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on November 21, 1964.
As an effort among non-Catholic Christians to promote greater Christian unity, the ecumenical movement was roughly 50 years old at the time. The decree was intended to remove any question that the Catholic Church would join the ecumenical movement decisively, enthusiastically and productively. It was approved by 97% of the nearly 2,120 bishops in attendance.
The pope needs to explain where he gets the competence or authority to override the Council on these matters.
The document published yesterday is replete with oddities ripe for plucking:
It was not issued by the pope, but by Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (headed by Joseph Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI, and formerly known as the Holy Office and the Inquisition). However, the document says that Benedict ratified and confirmed the statements and ordered their publication.
According to press reports, the new document restates key sections of a 2000 text Ratzinger wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, which riled the other Christian churches at the time. Why the pope chose the start of his 2007 summer vacation to reissue his decree from 2000 is anybody’s guess.
The only theologian specifically referenced in the document—in a very convoluted discussion of what it means to say the church of Christ “subsists” in the Catholic Church—is Leonardo Boff, a proponent of Liberation Theology whom Ratzinger targeted in 1985. Boff subsequently left the priesthood, and no one has championed his position on this subject for years.
But the greatest curiosity is why Benedict XVI thinks he can arrogate to himself the power to contradict the clear ecumenical emphasis and positions of the bishops of the church at Vatican II.
The Decree on Ecumenism was initially drafted by the Secretariat for Christian Unity, established by Pope John XXIII in 1959 to be at the service of observers he asked the Orthodox and Protestant churches to send to the Council, and to coordinate the Council’s statement on ecumenism.
The bishops of the Council debated the document in three separate sessions from 1962 through 1964. They proposed over a thousand changes, which the secretariat reviewed. After feedback from the secretariat and voting on final changes, the bishops approved the resulting individual chapters of the decree.
The day before the vote on the decree as a whole, Pope Paul VI made 19 last-minute changes to the text, too late for the bishops to discuss or vote on individually. The bishops approved the entire decree with all of the 19 changes.
While the changes did not radically alter what the final draft said, as it turns out Benedict hangs a major component of his current stance on one of them. Yet even there Benedict is distorting what the Council said, as his current document does on each questions it addresses.
The document claims that Vatican II did not change the Catholic teaching on the church. On the face of it, this claim is preposterous. According to the English translators, the 16 promulgated documents of Vatican II include 103,014 words. The English translation (including introductions, footnotes and brief responses from observers who were invited to the Council), takes up nearly 750 pages. It is simply inconceivable that the bishops prepared for the council for four years, deliberated for three, and had nothing new to say about the church. In his Models of the Church, Cardinal Avery Dulles catalogues the competing descriptions of the church that have been held in tension since the Council.
The general editor of the English translation of the Vatican II documents noted that up to the Council, the Catholic Church prayed eight days each January for the Orthodox and Protestant churches to return to Rome. With the Decree on Ecumenism, the emphasis was on the pilgrim church moving toward Christ, rather than toward Rome.
Indeed, Benedict’s document even cites Pope John Paul II’s version of a point the Council stressed repeatedly: “…the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.” The Council’s version was that “…some, even very many, of the most significant elements or endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church herself can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church.”
Benedict also quotes another Council text favorably: “It follows that these separated churches and communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation. In fact the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value derives from that fullness of grace and truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church.”
Despite acknowledging these obvious changes in the Catholic attitude toward the other Christian churches, Benedict then reverts to pre-Vatican II positions which only an extreme minority at the Council ever supported and which the Council overruled in its final decrees.
Nowhere does Benedict’s document mention the Council’s acknowledgment that differences between Christians go all the way back to Peter and Paul—even though he ordered publication of his document on their ecumenically significant annual feast day.
Nowhere does Benedict’s document mention the Council’s judgment that blame for subsequent separations in the history of Christianity often belonged on both sides (which, ironically, he did note in his recent discussion about controversies related to the old Latin Mass).
Nowhere does Benedict’s document stress that the Council purposefully referred to the Orthodox bodies as churches, and never hinted that their lack of communion with Rome should prevent them from being designated as churches.
On the contrary, the Council noted that “from their very origins the Churches of the East have had a treasury from which the Church of the West has amply drawn for its liturgy, spiritual tradition and jurisprudence. Nor must we underestimate the fact that the basic dogmas of the Christian faith concerning the Trinity and God’s Word made flesh of the Virgin Mary were defined in Ecumenical Councils held in the East. To preserve this faith, these Churches have suffered much, and still do so.” The bishops concluded, “…this sacred Synod declares that this entire heritage of spirituality and liturgy, of discipline and theology, in their various traditions, belongs to the full catholic and apostolic character of the Church.”
Nowhere does Benedict’s document mention that in speaking of the Protestant Reformation the Council said, “…many Communions, national or denominational, were separated from the Roman See. Among those in which some Catholic traditions and institutions continue to exist, the Anglican Communion occupies a special place.” This should have led Benedict to at least assess the Anglican Communion in conjunction with his discussion of the Orthodox churches. But it did not.
It is true that the Council did make a distinction between churches and ecclesial communities. A footnote says the bishops’ thinking was that the more an institution has of the essential structures of the Catholicism, the more it is entitled to be called a church. The usage was also intended to be respectful and inclusive of some Christian bodies which do not wish to be called churches.
Yet the Decree on Ecumenism explicitly prescinded from categorizing specific Christian bodies as churches or ecclesial communities: “Since in origin, teaching and spiritual practice, these churches and ecclesial communities differ not only from us but also among themselves to a considerable degree, the task of describing them adequately is very difficult; we do not propose to do it here.”
One would never know this from Benedict’s analysis, which lumps together all of the Reformation churches without distinction, because they “do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church.”
This is the most complicated point to address, because it is impacted by one of Pope Paul VI’s last-minute additions. What the bishops said in the individual chapter they approved was that churches without a sacrament of orders lacked “the full reality of the Eucharistic mystery.” Their wording implied that the Reformed churches retained some of that reality. And while lack of fullness was their main criterion for calling them ecclesial communities rather than churches, their point was not to dwell on how exactly they were Christian bodies, but to call for more dialogue on “the true meaning of the Lord’s Supper, the other sacraments, and the Church’s worship and ministry.”
Pope Paul changed “the full reality of the Eucharistic mystery” to “genuinam atque integram substantiam Mysterii eucharistici.” To stay as close as possible to the bishops’ intent, the 1960s English translators rendered this to say that the Reformed churches lacked “the genuine and total reality of the Eucharistic mystery.”
Today’s Vatican translation is much harsher. Benedict now says they lack “the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery.” Although the text still leaves it as a situation calling for more dialogue about the eucharist and the sacraments, the implication is that the Reformed churches do not have a valid eucharist.
This tends to contradict the next sentence of the bishop’s language, which Paul VI did not remove: “Nevertheless, when they commemorate the Lord’s death and resurrection in the Holy Supper, they profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ, and they await his coming in glory.” Whatever Pope Paul VI intended to say, Benedict’s version is clearly a far cry from the final draft of the chapter which the Council approved.
Thus Benedict’s position rests on this complicated, shaky interpretation of a single sentence, coupled with ignoring other important statements which remained in the decree or twisting some beyond recognition. Given this, it is difficult to find any positive value in using the position to publicly assault the integrity and sincerity of Orthodox and Protestant followers of Jesus.
The Catholic Church officially abandoned malediction toward other Christians in 1964. The Catholic Church expects the pope to follow that official position. It would certainly be a better way for Benedict to live up to his name.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
The City That Care Forsook
For decades before Hurricane Katrina, one of New Orleans' favorite slogans was "The City That Care Forgot." The emphasis was on care-free. Not that residents and visitors had no cares. But that New Orleans was a place where people set their cares aside, counted their blessings, and reveled in celebrating the fullness of life.
With the federal government's negligence before, during and after Katrina, New Orleans has every right to change its slogan to "The City That Care Forsook." The attitude of the Bush administration has not been care-free, but care-less.
Through its Army Corps of Engineers, the Bush administration underfunded the New Orleans levee system and built levees it knew were structurally unreliable--levees that broke and let in most of the water that flooded 80% of the city.
Through FEMA, the Bush administration ignored the plight of thousands of hurricane victims gathered at the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center--leaving volunteers like Harry Connick Jr. to pray over the bodies of the dead rotting in the summer heat.
In the person of President George W. Bush, the federal government stood in generator-powered spotlights in front of St. Louis Cathedral and lied about its commitment to make New Orleans whole again.
Through the Corp of Engineers, the Bush administration installed pumps on the canals before the 2006 hurricane season that it knew were not working right--saved from new consequences only by the good luck of few hurricanes that year.
And now through the Corps of Engineers, the Bush administration has strengthened the levee system in some of the places where it failed during Katrina, but, it turns out, in a way that now leaves the French Quarter--the most historic, most irreplaceable part of New Oreleans--more at risk than it used to be.
Is there no power on earth that can hold the Bush administration accountable for its negilgence?
The latest attrocity is reported by the Associated Press and posted at
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl070207tpfrenchquarter.35eece83.html
French Quarter more at risk for flooding with levee improvements elsewhere
07:37 AM CDT on Monday, July 2, 2007
Cain Burdeau / Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS -- The government's repairs to New Orleans' hurricane-damaged levees may put the French Quarter in greater danger than it was before Hurricane Katrina, a weakness planners said couldn't be helped, at least for now.
Experts say the stronger levees and flood walls could funnel storm water into the cul-de-sac of the Industrial Canal, only 2 miles from Bourbon Street, and overwhelm the waterway's 12-foot-high concrete flood walls that shield some of the city's most cherished neighborhoods.
The only things separating Creole bungalows and St. Louis Cathedral from a hurricane's storm surge are those barriers, similar in design to the walls that broke during Katrina.
"A system is much like a chain. We have strengthened some of the lengths, and those areas are now better protected," said Robert Bea, a lead investigator of an independent National Science Foundation team that examined Katrina's levee failures.
"When the chain is challenged by high water again, it will break at those weak links, and they are now next to some of the oldest neighborhoods, including the French Quarter, Marigny, and all of those areas west of the cul-de-sac."
J. David Rogers, another engineer with the National Science Foundation team, concurred with Bea's assessment that the French Quarter may now be in more peril than before Katrina.
Officials from the Army Corps of Engineers knew the levee repairs would heighten the risk to the French Quarter. One commander even called it the system's "Achilles' heel." To curb the danger, the corps reinforced the existing barriers. But engineers didn't have enough time or money to entirely replace the flood walls with higher, stronger ones.
Bea and other independent experts say those steps were insufficient.
"It wasn't, 'Get all the repairs done and then look at the rest of the system,"' said Ed Link, a University of Maryland engineer and a top adviser on the reconstruction work. "It was all being done in parallel."
The system, he said, is stronger now, but "it's misinformation to infer that it's an unintended consequence."
The possibility of a heightened risk came as a surprise to many residents of the French Quarter and districts such as New Marigny, where jazz great Jelly Roll Morton once lived.
"Is that what they're saying? Oh, boy, that's not good," said Nathan Chapman, president of Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents and Associates Inc., an advocacy group that defends the quality of life in the French Quarter. "It's not on enough people's radar."
Adolph Bynum was unconvinced about the potential new threat to his restoration of an 1840 Creole cottage damaged by Katrina's winds in Treme, a charming neighborhood next to the French Quarter where plantation owners once housed their black mistresses.
"If the cottage floods or Treme floods, so will the French Quarter. If that happens, everything is flooded," Bynum said.
The city's oldest neighborhoods were settled long ago because they were the only dry ground in a wilderness of swamp. When Katrina struck, flooding only reached the outer limit of the French Quarter, creeping into places such as St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, the site of voodoo priestess Marie Laveau's tomb.
With their open-air markets, flamboyant artists, baroque churches and carefree lifestyle, the neighborhoods next to the Industrial Canal are some of the city's most prized real estate and give New Orleans its old-world soul.
"If we lose them, gosh, New Orleans would no longer be New Orleans," Chapman said.
As for the new threat posed by the Industrial Canal, corps officials argue that there are other low and weak spots along the channel that might be the first to go, taking pressure off of the section near the French Quarter.
But Bea cautioned that a set of navigational locks on the French Quarter side would likely cause water to accumulate and even create a whirlpool effect. He said there is evidence the locks were a factor in the collapse of the flood wall next to the Lower 9th Ward during Katrina. The Lower 9th Ward sits on the other side of the canal from the French Quarter.
Corps officials also say that if water spilled over the walls near the Quarter, or even breached them, low-lying neighborhoods would flood first.
But Army engineers don't plan on taking any chances. They may eventually add steel plates to raise and armor the walls, block storm surge with sunken barges, and install flood gates.
However, there is no plan to beef up the protection for this year's hurricane season.
Cecil Soileau, a corps consultant and former corps engineer who designed many of the levees, said alarm over the threat to the Quarter is overblown.
"We've had people in the past saying Jackson Square would be inundated with 26 feet of water and only the steeple of the cathedral would be sticking up," Soileau said. "And I don't think that's a realistic situation."
With the federal government's negligence before, during and after Katrina, New Orleans has every right to change its slogan to "The City That Care Forsook." The attitude of the Bush administration has not been care-free, but care-less.
Through its Army Corps of Engineers, the Bush administration underfunded the New Orleans levee system and built levees it knew were structurally unreliable--levees that broke and let in most of the water that flooded 80% of the city.
Through FEMA, the Bush administration ignored the plight of thousands of hurricane victims gathered at the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center--leaving volunteers like Harry Connick Jr. to pray over the bodies of the dead rotting in the summer heat.
In the person of President George W. Bush, the federal government stood in generator-powered spotlights in front of St. Louis Cathedral and lied about its commitment to make New Orleans whole again.
Through the Corp of Engineers, the Bush administration installed pumps on the canals before the 2006 hurricane season that it knew were not working right--saved from new consequences only by the good luck of few hurricanes that year.
And now through the Corps of Engineers, the Bush administration has strengthened the levee system in some of the places where it failed during Katrina, but, it turns out, in a way that now leaves the French Quarter--the most historic, most irreplaceable part of New Oreleans--more at risk than it used to be.
Is there no power on earth that can hold the Bush administration accountable for its negilgence?
The latest attrocity is reported by the Associated Press and posted at
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl070207tpfrenchquarter.35eece83.html
French Quarter more at risk for flooding with levee improvements elsewhere
07:37 AM CDT on Monday, July 2, 2007
Cain Burdeau / Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS -- The government's repairs to New Orleans' hurricane-damaged levees may put the French Quarter in greater danger than it was before Hurricane Katrina, a weakness planners said couldn't be helped, at least for now.
Experts say the stronger levees and flood walls could funnel storm water into the cul-de-sac of the Industrial Canal, only 2 miles from Bourbon Street, and overwhelm the waterway's 12-foot-high concrete flood walls that shield some of the city's most cherished neighborhoods.
The only things separating Creole bungalows and St. Louis Cathedral from a hurricane's storm surge are those barriers, similar in design to the walls that broke during Katrina.
"A system is much like a chain. We have strengthened some of the lengths, and those areas are now better protected," said Robert Bea, a lead investigator of an independent National Science Foundation team that examined Katrina's levee failures.
"When the chain is challenged by high water again, it will break at those weak links, and they are now next to some of the oldest neighborhoods, including the French Quarter, Marigny, and all of those areas west of the cul-de-sac."
J. David Rogers, another engineer with the National Science Foundation team, concurred with Bea's assessment that the French Quarter may now be in more peril than before Katrina.
Officials from the Army Corps of Engineers knew the levee repairs would heighten the risk to the French Quarter. One commander even called it the system's "Achilles' heel." To curb the danger, the corps reinforced the existing barriers. But engineers didn't have enough time or money to entirely replace the flood walls with higher, stronger ones.
Bea and other independent experts say those steps were insufficient.
"It wasn't, 'Get all the repairs done and then look at the rest of the system,"' said Ed Link, a University of Maryland engineer and a top adviser on the reconstruction work. "It was all being done in parallel."
The system, he said, is stronger now, but "it's misinformation to infer that it's an unintended consequence."
The possibility of a heightened risk came as a surprise to many residents of the French Quarter and districts such as New Marigny, where jazz great Jelly Roll Morton once lived.
"Is that what they're saying? Oh, boy, that's not good," said Nathan Chapman, president of Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents and Associates Inc., an advocacy group that defends the quality of life in the French Quarter. "It's not on enough people's radar."
Adolph Bynum was unconvinced about the potential new threat to his restoration of an 1840 Creole cottage damaged by Katrina's winds in Treme, a charming neighborhood next to the French Quarter where plantation owners once housed their black mistresses.
"If the cottage floods or Treme floods, so will the French Quarter. If that happens, everything is flooded," Bynum said.
The city's oldest neighborhoods were settled long ago because they were the only dry ground in a wilderness of swamp. When Katrina struck, flooding only reached the outer limit of the French Quarter, creeping into places such as St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, the site of voodoo priestess Marie Laveau's tomb.
With their open-air markets, flamboyant artists, baroque churches and carefree lifestyle, the neighborhoods next to the Industrial Canal are some of the city's most prized real estate and give New Orleans its old-world soul.
"If we lose them, gosh, New Orleans would no longer be New Orleans," Chapman said.
As for the new threat posed by the Industrial Canal, corps officials argue that there are other low and weak spots along the channel that might be the first to go, taking pressure off of the section near the French Quarter.
But Bea cautioned that a set of navigational locks on the French Quarter side would likely cause water to accumulate and even create a whirlpool effect. He said there is evidence the locks were a factor in the collapse of the flood wall next to the Lower 9th Ward during Katrina. The Lower 9th Ward sits on the other side of the canal from the French Quarter.
Corps officials also say that if water spilled over the walls near the Quarter, or even breached them, low-lying neighborhoods would flood first.
But Army engineers don't plan on taking any chances. They may eventually add steel plates to raise and armor the walls, block storm surge with sunken barges, and install flood gates.
However, there is no plan to beef up the protection for this year's hurricane season.
Cecil Soileau, a corps consultant and former corps engineer who designed many of the levees, said alarm over the threat to the Quarter is overblown.
"We've had people in the past saying Jackson Square would be inundated with 26 feet of water and only the steeple of the cathedral would be sticking up," Soileau said. "And I don't think that's a realistic situation."
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