Mary Quite Contrary: Monster Monstrance Promotes Mariolatry and Wafer Madness

“Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” These words from Golgotha, among the last that scripture attributes to the earthly Jesus, are all too apt for the object pictured above.

Take a close look at it. Never seen anything like it? You’re right. There’s never been anything like it. It’s a statue of Mary, the mother of Jesus, that’s nine feet tall and 700 pounds. But it’s not just the height and weight that make it special. It’s that round niche cut into most of the torso between the heart and the uterus. The niche is meant for displaying a 12-inch consecrated communion wafer. That technically makes the statue a monstrance, and it’s said to be the biggest in the world.

For a better appreciation of the sheer size of the piece, the picture below shows how it dwarfs Deacon Michael McCloskey of Holy Name Cathedral as he places a consecrated host in it on May 31st.

That was the day the curtains parted in the sanctuary of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Chicago to reveal the monstrance of Our Lady of the Sign, Ark of Mercy.

The archdiocesan newspaper and the Catholic News Service reported that Cardinal Francis George (an Oblate of Mary Immaculate) “was on hand to celebrate Mass and bless the new nine-foot, hand-carved and painted monstrance featuring Mary atop a gold-leaf decorated ark flanked by two kneeling angels, also in gold leaf, whose wings extend to shelter her.”

The desire to glorify Mary for her unique role in salvation history is biblically sound, especially her cooperation with God in bearing Jesus, bringing him into the world, keeping faith with him through his ministry and death, and being among the earliest to bear witness to his resurrection.

However, what is very dubious theologically is for the Catholic Church to procure and promote a physical image of Mary that in its monstrous size so towers over human beings that it could easily be confused for a pagan idol or an Asian Buddha. It leaves the church open to charges of Mariolatry, a term used in the past by Protestant critics who believed Catholics tended to denigrate worship of Jesus and his Father by idolizing Jesus’ mother.

And it muddies the theological waters all the more to turn this overwrought likeness of Mary into a monstrance, which misconstrues Mary’s relationship to the eucharist and promotes misunderstanding of the eucharist itself.

It was no accident that eucharistic devotions like exposition of the blessed sacrament (in a monstrance), 40 hours devotion before the exposed eucharist (in a monstrance), benediction with the exposed eucharist (in a monstrance) and Corpus Christi processions of the consecrated host (in a monstrance) became less frequent after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

The Council took seriously the concern of modern liturgists that with the emergence of large medieval cathedrals the original Lord’s Supper had become distorted from a shared meal to a mammoth exercise of visual adoration. A cult of sharing and eating the eucharistic bread and wine, “in memory of me” as Jesus asked, was replaced with a cult of looking at the consecrated bread and venerating it. As Catholic professors of sacramental theology told their students in the 1970s, in the decades before the Council the challenge wasn’t believing that the bread was really Jesus: the challenge was to believe it was bread!

The eucharistic devotions were never officially revoked. But they were officially downplayed in favor of reformed eucharistic liturgies that put greater emphasis on the altar as a table and the eucharist as a shared meal, Jesus’ transformation of the Passover seder into a celebration of his own deliverance, and ours.

Still, the conservative reaction against Vatican II included a renewed preference for the old eucharistic devotions. Pope John Paul II did not discourage them, and as recently as May 22, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI could be found kneeling before a monstrance driven through the streets of Rome on a canopied flatbed truck, on the way to a benediction service and eucharistic devotions.

But as with other issues discussed here, just because the pope thinks something and does something does not make it theologically correct or in this case sacramentally wise. And that is especially true of allowing one of his U.S. cardinals to help commission and encourage veneration of the largest monstrance in the world.

Two fans of the new monstrance described some of the devotions that accompanied its unveiling. They help explain the theological misgivings I raise:

“After Mass, many remained in Adoration. Some got out of their pews to walk close to the altar so they could get a better view of the monstrance, while others were prostrate on the ground, kneeling on the floor, or just standing in awe before the Eucharist. Many walked out of the church with tears in their eyes.

”Many families attended despite temperatures in the 90s. The ceremonies began at 6 p.m. eastern time. Long after Mass, people lingered. In fact, at 11 p.m., the church was still packed. People crowded near the front entrance to St. Stanislaus Church, talking about their personal experiences they had in the unveiling, Mass, and Adoration.

“‘It was almost as if you were away from the world,’ shared one pilgrim, ‘and Noble Drive [the location of the church in Chicago] had become a piece of heaven on earth.’”

If so, this particular heaven on earth is an ersatz one. These kind of devotions are not how Jesus asked his followers remember him. They detract from what he did request, that we share bread and wine in a ritual meal. By claiming to experience Jesus as more intensely present in these devotions than in the ritual meal, they misconstrue the meaning of the eucharist and trivialize Jesus’ presence in the eucharistic liturgy.

And by transforming Mary into a monstrance, they trivialize her actual role in salvation history and turn her into some kind of mystical ark of a mystical new covenant centered on veneration of consecrated hosts.

I know of nothing that will convince Cardinal George and Benedict XVI to stop pushing these devotions. But those who are truly devoted to the eucharist need to challenge them and affirm that nothing in Christianity should ever be given greater prominence than the eucharistic meal.

Creationists Evolve in Texas and U.S., Proving Darwin Factual Even If They’re Not

The Houston Chronicle had reports yesterday on two new strategies by creationists to make their fundamentalist anti-evolution teachings pass constitutional muster in public school science classes. Neither effort is unprecedented, but in the face of prior defeats the creationists have changed their tactics—proving evolution a fact of life, despite their claims to the contrary.

In one, a creationist school wants the state to authorize its proposed Master of Science degree in Science Education (MSE). The MSE is Texas’ certification of an individual’s competence to teach science in public schools. In April the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board denied the request by the Institute for Creation Research to offer the degree, on the grounds that the creationist content of the courses would not equip graduates to teach science in Texas public schools. Now the institute has appealed the board’s decision. That gives the independent Office of Administrative Hearings 180 days to hear the case. The institute plans to file a lawsuit against the state if the appeal does not reverse the board.

The other effort? Modify the criteria and content of the state’s science curriculum, which of course is what the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board relied on for its April decision. The creationists hope to convince the State Board of Education to re-interpret an existing rule that has never required mentioning creationism in a science class. The current rule requires teachers to present both the strengths and weaknesses of all scientific theories. The creationists would have the State Board of Education list the lack of ‘intelligent design’ as a weakness of evolution and require science teachers to address it in class.


Coincidentally, Alan Boyle, science editor at MSNBC.com, noted yesterday that these changes in tactics are not exclusive to Texas. Ever since 2005, when a federal judge ruled that intelligent design was a religious concept that should not be taught in science classes, the creationists have sought new ways to force public school science teachers to indoctrinate students with fundamentalist objections to evolution. The latest trend paints creationism as an academic freedom issue, contending that science teachers should have the right to express any questions they have about evolution, including religious ones. Hopefully the boards which decide science curricula will find this approach as bogus as intelligent design. If not, another federal court should.

Because Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy is grounded so thoroughly on the organic evolution of reality, including thought and God, the creationists are unlikely to give it a second thought. The more clever among them might eventually figure out they could claim his support for intelligent design. The claim would ultimately prove bogus. But, forewarned is forearmed.

Chapter 3 of my doctoral dissertation explains why Whitehead holds that every instance of novelty involves purpose, and that nothing in the givenness of past provides an answer to the question “What next?” After lots and lots of tortured research and analysis, Whitehead concludes that the ‘initial aim’ of each novel occasion of experience can only derive from God. This would square quite remarkably with the creationists’ insistence that natural selection as described by Darwin in not sufficient to account for novelty in evolution (although it would not help fundamentalists with salvaging the temporal chronology of Genesis and other biblical creation accounts as factual).

But Whitehead would never countenance the intrusion of this analysis into the high school science curriculum—or probably even science courses at the college or graduate levels. Whitehead was writing cosmology and metaphysics. The proper place to teach and address such thought is philosophy and theology classes.

Those, of course, are not much in favor in public education at any level. But if the creationists want to become serious about getting their feet in that door, they might try shifting their emphasis to the propriety of offering philosophy or religion classes in public schools.

That too can be debated. But unlike theocratizing science classes, it is not an idea that must be foreclosed constitutionally from the start. And if it could pass constitutional muster, it would at least be putting philosophical discussion in the curriculum where it belongs.

The Founders Be Damned: Exxon Mobil Plans To Worship Crude Another 30 Years!

Despite pleas from the families of two of its founders, Exxon Mobil’s stockholders voted in Dallas yesterday by a 60% majority to retain as chairman and CEO a wealthy executive who actually believes the world can survive another 30 years with crude as king.

Descendants of John D. Rockefeller, 19th-century founder of Exxon Mobil predecessor Standard Oil Corp., sought to strip Rex Tillerson of the chairmanship role, because they think he has focused too much on short-term gains from soaring oil prices, when the company’s long-term viability depends on moving more quickly to sustainable alternatives.

The Rockefeller family members were supported by several influential proxy advisory firms, treasurers of California, Connecticut and Maryland, several British pension funds and other institutional investors.

Speaking for them before the meeting, William Thompson Jr., who as city comptroller oversees New York City’s retirement system assets, said “Exxon Mobil has long evinced a culture of defiance and indifferent to many important concerns of long-term shareholders.”

But the proposal got only 39.5% of the vote, down slightly from the 40% it got last year. This is the seventh year in a row the proposal has failed.

Tillerson also faced opposition from descendants of Robert Lee Blaffer, co-founder of Humble Oil, another Exxon Mobil predecessor. In an op-ed piece in last Sunday’s Houston Chronicle, his granddaughter Jane Dale Owen called on the shareholders to “Top off Exxon Mobil’s greed.” Owen wrote:

My family members and I are shareholders in Exxon Mobil, and many of us are very concerned about the devastating effect the largest privately held oil company in the world is having on the health of people living near our refineries and chemical plants, and on the planet.

In the Political Economy Research Institute's recent "Toxic 100" report released in April, Exxon Mobil ranks 10th among the worst corporate toxic polluters in the United States. This is unacceptable considering the company's huge profits.

My grandfather would also be dismayed by Exxon Mobil's long-standing denial of the industry's contribution to global warming and lack of efforts to diversify and move toward more sustainable energy solutions.

Other family members and I believe greed, arrogance and short-term thinking have led Exxon Mobil to jeopardize the company's reputation and put the planet, human health and our investments at risk.

We join with the Exxon Enough! coalition in calling on Exxon Mobil management to:

• Undertake health surveys of all the people living in communities where the company has facilities, on the Texas Gulf Coast and elsewhere, and to provide for relocation and on-going health care for people living near its facilities.

• Accept the necessity of a windfall war profits tax.

• Invest in alternative energy sources and alternative transportation systems as a way of reducing global warming.

My family and I are saying to Exxon: Enough of your pollution that harms the health of the people living near your refineries and plants; enough of your war-profiteering; enough of your excess profits while we pay outrageous prices for gas; enough of your denial that burning petroleum products fuels global warming; and enough of your lack of foresight, accountability and fiscal responsibility.

The founders’ families recognize that the greed of Exxon Mobil’s shareholders imperils not only the future of the company but the viability of the planet. But the shareholders still turn a deaf ear.

Of course they also decline to listen to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who warns almost weekly that our lack of a national energy policy will destroy the United States’ economy and political power before it destroys the globe.

The same day that the Exxon Mobil shareholders voted for more of the same, Friedman was applauding that with gas at $4 a gallon, oil was at last at a price that might make energy alternatives more economically desirable. He ridiculed those who would act as enablers of higher American oil consumption:

Cynical ideas, like the McCain-Clinton summertime gas-tax holiday, would only make the problem worse, and reckless initiatives like the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep offer to subsidize gasoline for three years for people who buy its gas guzzlers are the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounted cigarettes to teenagers.

I can’t say it better than my friend Tim Shriver, the chairman of Special Olympics, did in a Memorial Day essay in The Washington Post: “So Dodge wants to sell you a car you don’t really want to buy, that is not fuel-efficient, will further damage our environment, and will further subsidize oil states, some of which are on the other side of the wars we’re currently fighting. ... The planet be damned, the troops be forgotten, the economy be ignored: buy a Dodge.”

Friedman concluded:

We need to make a structural shift in our energy economy. Ultimately, we need to move our entire fleet to plug-in electric cars. The only way to get from here to there is to start now with a price signal that will force the change.

Words Exxon Mobil’s founders’ families have taken to heart. How great a catastrophe will it take to convince its shareholder profiteers?

Despite Improvements, New Orleans Canal Still Leaks; West Bank Lags Behind

With hurricane season just days away, MSNBC has posted two articles that highlight disturbing vulnerabilities in New Orleans' hurricane protection systems.

In one the Associated Press reports:

Despite more than $22 million in repairs, a levee that broke with catastrophic effect during Hurricane Katrina is leaking again because of the mushy ground on which New Orleans was built, raising serious questions about the reliability of the city's flood defenses.

Outside engineering experts who have studied the project told The Associated Press that the type of seepage spotted at the 17th Street Canal in the Lakeview neighborhood afflicts other New Orleans levees, too, and could cause some of them to collapse during a storm.

The Army Corps of Engineers has spent about $4 billion so far of the $14 billion set aside by Congress to repair and upgrade the metropolitan area's hundreds of miles of levees by 2011. Some outside experts said the leak could mean that billions more will be needed and that some of the work already completed may need to be redone.

"It is all based on a 30-year-old defunct model of thinking, and it means that when they wake up to this one — really — our cost is going to increase significantly," said Bob Bea, a civil engineer at the University of California at Berkeley.

The 17th Street Canal floodwall collapsed on the day Katrina surged over New Orleans in August 2005, and the failure severely damaged Lakeview. It was one of the biggest of about 50 levee breaches that contributed to the deaths of about 1,300 people.

Fixing the 17th Street Canal has been one of the most expensive and laborious repair jobs since the storm and has served as something of a test case for scientists and engineers, who plan to apply the lessons learned there to the city's other levees.

Among other things, they repaired the wall by driving interlocking sheets of steel 60 feet into the ground, compared with about 17 feet before the storm. The sheet metal is supposed to prevent canal water from seeping under the levee through the wet, toothpaste-like soil that lies beneath the city, which was built on reclaimed swamp and filled-in marsh.

Over the past few months, however, the corps found evidence that canal water is seeping through the joints in the sheet metal and then rising to the surface on the other side of the levee, forming puddles and other wet spots.

Engineers said the boggy ground is a more serious problem than the corps realizes. Bea said there is a roughly 40 percent chance of the 17th Street Canal levee collapsing if water rises higher than 6 feet above sea level. During Katrina, the water reached 7 feet in the canal.

John Schmertmann, a retired University of Florida professor and a consultant on foundations, agreed with Bea that the corps "may still be embedding some of these not-properly-considered factors, so the new walls may not do what the corps expects."

Reducing such seepage might require the driving of sheet metal far deeper into the ground than is done now, or some other solution, said Bea, who was part of a team of experts sent by the National Science Foundation to do an independent study of the levee failures during Katrina.

In another MSNBC post, Reuters reports:

Post-Katrina New Orleans remains two separate communities as another hurricane season begins on June 1.

On the city's East Bank, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is raising levees and installing steel-reinforced gates on three drainage canals to block a surge in Lake Pontchartrain from pushing into the canals, as occurred in 2005.

Lt. Col. Murray Starkel, the Corp's deputy commander in New Orleans, said the reinforced gates will protect the canals against a surge during a Katrina-like storm that might occur once every 100 years.

That once-in-100-year-event has become the Corps' minimum standard for New Orleans' flood protection.

"I think the inner portion of the city of New Orleans is better protected than it has been in many, many years," said Jerry Sneed of Louisiana's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. "Is it at the 100-year storm level? Not yet, but it will be in the near future."

The other side of the river is a different story.

About $285 million in improvements on West Bank levees and floodwalls won't be completed for another year.

That system will only meet standards set more than two decades ago, said Gerald Spohrer, executive director of the West Jefferson Levee District. Reaching 100-year storm protection will take at least three more years, he said.

The West Bank, much of which lies south of downtown New Orleans, is at greater risk than the rest of the city because it is more exposed to the Gulf. It came through Katrina relatively unscathed only because the storm jogged eastward just before landfall.

"The West Bank is still vulnerable," Sneed said. "Our biggest fear is that people who live on the West Bank of New Orleans and didn't get flooded think that they are home free in the event of a storm."

Republican California Supreme Court Declares Gay Marriage Ban Unconstitutional

CNN reports that California’s Supreme Court has voted 4-3 to overturn a ban on gay marriage approved by voters in a 2000 referendum dubbed the Defense of Marriage Act. CNN said the ruling was a surprise, because the court has a reputation for being conservative and six of its seven judges are Republican appointees.

Subsequent to the 2000 vote the state legislature passed two laws which aimed to make it easier for gays to wed, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed both. CNN quotes him as saying he will uphold the court’s decision and will not support a proposed constitutional amendment pending before the California Secretary of State which would overturn the court’s ruling. Excerpts from CNN's report follow:

The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage Thursday, saying sexual orientation, like race or gender, "does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights."

In a 4-3 120-page ruling issue, the justices wrote that "responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation."

"We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples," Chief Justice Ronald George wrote for the majority.

The ruling takes affect in 30 days.

Several gay and lesbian couples, along with the city of San Francisco and gay rights groups, filed a lawsuit saying they were victims of unlawful discrimination. A lower court ruled San Francisco acted unlawfully in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said he is "profoundly grateful" for the decision and for the court's "eloquence" in its delivery.

"After four long years, we're very, very gratified," he said.

Shannon Minter, attorney for one of the plaintiffs in the case, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, called the ruling "a moment of pure happiness and joy for so many families in California."

"California sets the tone, and this will have a huge effect across the nation to bringing wider acceptance for gay and lesbian couples," he said.

Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, issued a statement saying, "Today's ruling affirms that committed couples, gay and straight, should not be denied the duties, obligations and protections of marriage. ... This decision is a vital affirmation to countless California couples -- straight and gay -- who want to make and have made a lifelong commitment to take care of and be responsible for each other."

A constitutional amendment initiative specifying that marriage is only between a man and a woman is awaiting verification by the secretary of state's office after its sponsors said they had gathered enough signatures to place it on the statewide ballot. The parties cannot appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Herrera said, as federal courts do not have jurisdiction over the state laws. "This is the final say," he said.

In a dissenting opinion, Associate Justice Marvin Baxter wrote that although he agrees with some of the majority's conclusions, the court was overstepping its bounds in striking down the ban. Instead, he wrote, the issue should be left to the voters.

In 2004, San Francisco officials allowed gay couples in the city to wed, prompting a flood of applicants crowding the city hall clerk's office. The first couple to wed then was 80-year-old Phyllis Lyon and 83-year-old Dorothy Martin, lovers for 50 years.

"We have a right just like anyone else to get married to the person we want to get married to," Lyon said at the time.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom called the ruling a victory not just for the city "but for literally millions of people. ... What the court did is simply affirm their lives."

CNN's Ted Rowlands reported that "huge cheers" went up in San Francisco when the ruling was announced.

"There can be no doubt that extending the designation of marriage to same-sex couples, rather than denying it to all couples, is the equal protection remedy that is most consistent with our state's general legislative policy and preference," the ruling said.

"Accordingly, in light of the conclusions we reach concerning the constitutional questions brought to us for resolution, we determine that the language of Section 300 limiting the designation of marriage to a 'union between a man and a woman' is unconstitutional, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples."

Newsom compared the ruling to the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Virginia case overturning that state's ban on interracial marriage.

"This is about civil marriage. This is about fundamental rights," he said.

Episcopal Bishop Robinson Will Travel to the Lambeth Conference, Wecome or Not

In an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show, openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson says he will not be disuaded from voicing that God calls everyone to his table, even if it means still facing death threats for doing so.

Robinson laments that the Archbishop of Canterbury has not invited him to the Anglican Communion's upcoming Lambeth Conference. But he confirms he will sit outside it to talk with anyone who's interested in speaking with someone who's unashamedly gay and unashamedly Christian.

Bishop Robinson says that one reason that he will enter a civil union with his male partner is that he wants to afford them and their grown daughters the full protections that the law allows, especially if anyone who wishes him dead should prevail.

Hillary Pilloried--Rightfully--for Tauting Support from "White Americans"

It took a few hours, but Hillary Clinton is now getting widespread criticism for her interview with USA Today on Wednesday crowing about how well she is doing among "white Americans."

Evidently the phrase was not Clinton's originally. At least she attributed it to an Associated Press article. If so, the Associated Press used bad wording for an even worse idea. For Clinton to make the words her own was a disservice to the country, not to mention her party and her campaign.

CNN posted the story on its website about noon yesterday. It attracted numerous comments there, most of them critical of Clinton; but it was hard to find any reaction in other media outlets.

Today that's changed. Almost 24 hours later, the story on CNN's site has almost 1,200 comments, still predominantly critical. But more significantly, MSNBC this morning posted a piece entitled "Clinton: Playing the Race Card?" It includes lengthy quotations criticizing Clinton's remarks from the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and conservative Republican Peggy Noonan.

Noonan's take is particularly scathing: "If John McCain said, ‘I got the white vote, baby!’ his candidacy would be over. And rising in highest indignation against him would be the old Democratic Party. To play the race card as Mrs. Clinton has, to highlight and encourage a sense that we are crudely divided as a nation, to make your argument a brute and cynical ‘the black guy can't win but the white girl can’ is -- well, so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in case the children walk by.”

Noonan added: “‘She has unleashed the gates of hell,’ a longtime party leader told me. ‘She's saying, “He's not one of us.”’

This should be the last straw for any supporters Hillary had left. She needs to leave the stage before her desperation becomes any more pitiful.

Stealth Provision Denies Tax Rebates to Millions of Retirees

Millions of retirees will not get a tax rebate under the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008.

The Economic Stimulus Payment Calculator at irs.gov says they will. But fine print hidden in fact sheets and Frequently Asked Questions still being updated tells another story:

If your income is entirely from a state, federal or private pension or annuity, it doesn’t qualify for a rebate under the stimulus law.

Yes, it’s unfair, especially since such pensions and annuities are pretty much taxed in full (except for the small portion that comes from employee contributions that were taxed already).

And maybe the unfairness explains why the government has barely communicated this exclusion—and is not doing so consistently, even today.

But Congress worded the law so that the rebates go only to people who are working or receiving Social Security, Veterans or Railroad Retirement benefits. Those who receive other pensions and annuities get nothing.

I find this distressing on several levels: as a 27-year IRS employee, much of it in management; as a federal retiree whose present income consists entirely of annuities; and as an Enrolled Agent (now authorized to practice before IRS) who has found the Service’s communication of this exclusion woefully deficient.

How did this happen?

Blame goes first to Congress for passing a law that excluded so many retirees. Except for Social Security, Veterans and Railroad Retirement benefits, the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 defined “qualifying income” for the tax rebates as “earned income,” as described in Internal Revenue Code Section 32. Like most people—and apparently most members of Congress—I did not rush to the code to see what Section 32 says. In fact, it covers procedures for the Earned Income Credit.

Alas, Section 32(c)(2)(A) defines earned income as wages, salaries, tips, and other employee compensation or net earnings from self-employment. In case there was any doubt as to whether this includes retirement income, Section 32(c)(2)(B)ii adds: “no amount received as a pension or annuity shall be taken into account.”

As careless and mindless as Congress in enacting the wording of the act, President Bush signed it into law, leaving it to IRS to implement in the middle of the annual 1040 filing season.

To say that IRS never communicated the retiree exclusion at all would be inaccurate. But IRS should be faulted for not communicating it sooner, more effectively and above all more conspicuously.

It is true that an IRS fact sheet in February of 2008 included one sentence about the retiree exclusion. But I missed it, and I suspect most readers did, because it was tucked away after several other exclusions that had nothing to do with retirement:

“Dividends, interest and capital gains income is not included when determining qualifying income. Supplemental Security Income (SSI) does not count as qualifying income for the stimulus payment. Also not included in qualifying income are non-veterans or non-Social Security pension income (such as those from Individual Retirement Accounts).”

The section would have communicated the act’s true intent better if the paragraph had been entitled “Earned Income Test” and preceded by a sentence that said only earned income would qualify. But it didn’t.

On March 26th IRS experts conducted a national phone forum on the rebates for taxpayer representatives. It struck me that someone on the conference call alluded to retirement income being excluded, but it was an aside during discussion of another topic, and I thought it was referencing the separate treatment of Social Security and other government-benefit income. IRS missed another opportunity to emphasize a rebate exclusion impacting millions of taxpayers.

Only more recently has IRS begun to address the retiree exclusion directly—and even now irs.gov is not handling the topic consistently.

Originally, the FAQs at irs.gov did not mention pension and annuity income. Finally in April, the FAQs were updated to say that pensions and annuities from private employers were not qualifying income for a rebate.

It was not until yesterday that the Economic Stimulus FAQs were updated again to include state and federal retirees:

Q. Are pension and annuity amounts provided by state, federal or private sector employers considered qualifying income in determining eligibility for the economic stimulus payment?

No, these payments are not included in the legal definition of qualifying income. [Updated 5/7/08]

Yet even now, as observed at the outset, the Economic Stimulus Payment Calculator does not exclude such retirement income. A state, federal or private retiree who dutifully completes all of the boxes is told they are getting a rebate. Clearly the calculator needs to be updated with the same last-minute changes as the FAQs.

The way two branches of the federal government have handled the retiree exclusion is embarrassing. Of course, it is also inequitable.

There is no valid reason retirees who pay thousands of dollars annually on their retirement income should not receive the same rebate as wage-earners. It was a slap in their faces to deny them the rebate.

And on top of the financial unfairness, it was a special act of ingratitude to millions of state and federal retirees who served the public decade after decade with under-funded resources, technology and wages.

Congress should reverse this inequity promptly. If not, the excluded retirees should file a class-action lawsuit on the grounds that Congress is not giving all taxpayers equal protection of the law.

U.S. and European Fundamentalists Do Not Know the Bible as Well as "Critics"

The National Catholic Reporter says a sociological survey done in the United States and Europe shows that, surprisingly, those who hold that the Bible should be taken literally do not rank highest in reading the Bible accurately.

The poll was commissioned by the international Roman Catholic Synod of Bishops, who plan to address the theme "The Word of God" at a meeting in October. NCR writes:

"Sponsored by the Catholic Biblical Federation and carried out by GFK Eurisko, Italy’s leading market research organization, the survey polled people in the United States, the United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland and Russia.

"Plans call for four other countries shortly to be added to the mix, all in the global South: Argentina, South Africa, the Philippines, and Australia."

Among the more striking findings, NCR cites:

• The United States has by far the highest level of its adult population that claims to have read at least one passage from the Bible in the last year (75%) and to have a Bible at home (93%), but it doesn’t score better than anyone else on tests of basic Biblical literacy. For example, large numbers of Americans, just like people in the other eight countries surveyed, mistakenly thought that Jesus had authored a book of the Bible, and couldn’t correctly distinguish between Paul and Moses in terms of which figure belongs to the Old Testament.

• Fundamentalists, or those who take a literal view of Scripture, do not know more about the Bible than anyone else. In fact, researchers said, it’s readers whose attitudes they described as “critical,” meaning that they see the Bible as the word of God but in need of interpretation, who are over-represented at the highest levels of Biblical literacy. In other words, fundamentalists actually score lower on basic Biblical awareness.

• In virtually every country surveyed, those who take a “critical” view of the Bible represent a larger share of the population than either “fundamentalists” or “reductionists,” meaning those who see the Bible simply as literature or a collection of myths and legends. In the United States, “fundamentalists” are 27 percent of the population, “critics” 51 percent, and “reductionists” 20 percent. Interestingly, both Poland and Russia have a similar share of “fundamentalists,” despite lacking the strong Evangelical Protestant tradition familiar in the U.S.

• There is no apparent correlation between reading the Bible and any particular political orientation. In other words, it’s not the case that the more someone reads the Bible, the more likely they are to be a political conservative or liberal.

• There no longer appear to be major differences in Biblical reading patterns and Biblical familiarity between countries with Catholic majorities and those with Protestant majorities, suggesting that, in the words of Bishop Vincenzo Paglia of Terni, Italy, the president of the Catholic Biblical Federation, the Bible has become “the ecumenical book of all believers.”

Time to Nationalize Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell and BP?

Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, has announced another quarter of record profits—and another quarter of declining production, just like ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil, as well as British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell, the British-Dutch conglomerate.

In a column published before Chevron’s announcement today, Houston Chronicle business analyst Loren Steffy cautioned that the most serious problem facing national and world economies is not these record profits but that the decline in production by all of the investor-owned, non-nationalized oil companies is getting steadily worse.

Given the planet’s increasing demand for oil, the decline in the investor-owned companies’ contribution to the world’s supply is one of the chief factors raising the price of oil.

Which is one reason Steffy agrees with other analysts that the Clinton-McCain summer gas tax holiday is a very bad idea—because by lowering the price at the pump for the short term, it would only increase consumption and thus further exacerbate both the short supply of oil and its price.

Yet Steffy implies that a windfall profits tax would be a bad idea too, not only because it would not increase the investor-owned companies’ production, but also because it would deprive them of profits that should be diverted to exploration and production instead.

That concern would make sense if the investor-owned oil companies were in fact putting their profits to that use. But that isn’t their track record. All they have proved adept at doing is siphoning off the profits to enrich their investors and above all their corporate officers. That such action is suicidal to their longevity seems to have escaped them. Maybe some tough love would help.

Since windfall profits taxes have not convinced them before, how about something more drastic? Either the investor-owned oil companies document that, starting with the first quarter’s windfall, they are investing every dime of profit in exploration or production, or the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands will do it for them—by nationalizing any oil company that refuses to comply.

Absent such compliance, nationalization appears to be the only way to force the investors to stop enriching themselves at the expense of every oil consumer on the planet—which includes food producers and other businesses that have to increase their prices to cover spiraling oil-related costs.

If the three Western democracies were to take this draconian action, they might have to acknowledge that Hugo Chavez was right about something. If so, however, it will be because the investor-owned oil companies proved him right: they have shown over several years that the free market system is not an equitable way to deliver basic human necessities like energy. Rather, profit-making trumps delivery of resources necessary for life. People literally starve while the profiteers prosper.

Every person on earth has a right to those resources. A financial system which allows a few to subordinate that right to their greed is seriously in need of revision.

Several Economists and Pundits Slam "Clinton-McCain" Gas Tax Holiday

Reuters and CNN report that several respected economists find the proposal by John McCain and Hillary Clinton to suspend the gas tax for the summer a very bad idea--and that only Barack Obama grasps that the best way to reduce the price of oil is to use less of it.

The economists, from a spectrum of political backgrounds, include: Greg Mankiw, a former chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers; Eric Toder, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington; Gilbert Metclaf, a economics professor at Tufts University currently working with the National Bureau of Economic Research; and even New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, an economics professor at Princeton and a regular Clinton advisor, who has also questioned her hostility to NAFTA and CAFTA.

Summing up the economists' unanimous opinion on the gas tax holiday, Krugman wrote in his blog yesterday: “It’s Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies.”

New York Times syndicated columnist Thomas Friedman, who has written repeatedly and extensively on the dire state of U.S. energy policy, also heaps sarcasm on the idea in a column today entitled "Dumb as We Wanna Be:

"It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

"When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit." He continues:

"The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: 'Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.'

"Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

"But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage--gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars--and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage--new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite."

The opposite includes failure by the administration and Congress to provide incentives to viable alternatives like wind and solar power--while Shell and Exxon Mobile announce record profits. Friedman quotes another expert:

"It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, that the U.S. has reached a point 'where the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics' that it would turn its back on the next great global industry--clean power--'but that’s exactly what is happening.' If the wind and solar credits expire, said Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won’t be made.

"While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany--540 high-paying engineering jobs --because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.

"In 1997, said Resch, America was the leader in solar energy technology, with 40 percent of global solar production. 'Last year, we were less than 8 percent, and even most of that was manufacturing for overseas markets.'"

Friedman concludes: "The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious--the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout."

Wright's Jeremiads As American As the Earliest New England Pulpits

Barack Obama's public divorce from his former pastor notwithstanding, a columnist has developed a thought I posted here on March 28th. Rosemary Radford Ruether agrees that Jeremiah Wright's cursing of America has recent precedent from today's religious right. But, she adds, it's also a religious tradition of left and right that's as old as the earliest New England Puritans.

She quotes some of the conservative fundamentalists whose condemnations after 9/11 I alluded to, including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. She also recalls the judgment of Robertson and John Hagee after Hurricane Katrina that the catastrophe was God's judgment against sexual sinners in New Orleans. (Hagee, by the way, has endorsed John McCain for president. McCain says he disagrees with Hagee on Katrina, but he won't disown anyone who supports his candidacy! Sounds familiar.)

After noting that the prophet Jeremiah condemned Israel for sins both sexual and social, Ruether cites similar jeremiads by John Winthrop, the first governor of the Puritans' Massachusetts Bay colony, in a shipboard address while the settlers were still at sea; and by Nicolas Street, pastor of the New Haven Congregational Church during the American Revolution.

Another contribution Ruether makes to the discussion is to quote one of Wright's more infamous passages at greater length: "The government gives [black people] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America--that's in the Bible--for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

The full context reinforces why Wright says God condemns America: above all for our self-worship, our lording it over those less well-off and powerful than us, instead of being the servant people the Puritans hoped we would be.

This does not relieve Wright or Obama from specifying the limits within which Wright's assertions are true. But it does indicate that Wright made some effort to do so.

[Apologies, by the way, for misspelling Ruether's last name in my April 9th post.]

Left Ventricular Assist Devices (LVADs) Can Create End-of-Life Ethical Dilemmas

MSNBC is publicizing an important article in the Washington Post that describes why the latest and most effective heart pumps can cause serious end-of-life ethical dilemmas.

Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) originated as a way to keep damaged hearts functioning while heart-transplant candidates waited for donated organs. But the devices did such a good job that permanent implants are becoming the therapy of choice for patients with chronic heart failure.

The procedure costs about $200,000 and Medicare will pay for it. U.S. centers are implanting about 1,000 per year now. But the experts expect that to rise to 10,000 per year within the next five years.

The ethical problems arise when the devices begin to lose their effectiveness, either with further deterioration of the heart itself or related conditions that leave the patient with little or no quality of life.

The article says that most physicians equate the devices with ventilators, feeding tubes and other forms of life support that patients have the right to stop if their condition deteriorates or becomes intolerable. But others say the devices become a functioning part of the patient's heart, so that to shut off the devices is to do harm and even actively kill the patient.

Given this ethical debate, experts are recommending a lot more counseling and analysis before an individual patient gets an LVAD, including weighing cautiously if a patient is too old or too sick to really benefit from the device. However, this would not be of much help to patients in emergency situations who are not in a position to give informed consent to the procedure.

The article also notes extreme situations where LVAD recipients have become so distressed with their doctors' failure to address end-of-life frustration and pain that the patients have powered off the devices themselves.

Hopefully a new ethical consensus will develop on what options should and should not be available in dealing with this new technology.

Pope Did Not Prevent Pro-Choice Politicians from Sharing in Communion

National Catholic Reporter columnist John Allen Jr. notes that during two of the eucharistic liturgies Pope Benedict XVI led last week in Washington D.C. and New York City there was no effort to prevent three prominent pro-choice politicians from sharing in the communion service. In an article posted April 20th, Allen reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator John Kerry went to communion at Nationals Stadium and Rudy Giuliani at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

This is significant for a couple reasons. First, as Allen reminds us, several of the most conservative U.S. bishops have threatened to deny communion to Catholic politicans who do not work to make the right-to-life position law. He writes:

"During the 2004 elections, several American bishops announced that they would deny communion to Kerry because of his stance in favor of abortion rights. A majority of bishops, however, shrunk from that stance, worrying that it could politicize the Eucharist.

"Eventually, a commission of the bishops’ conference led by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick reached the conclusion that a uniform policy on the question could not be reached, and that it would be up to each bishop to set policy in his own diocese.

"Since that time debate has continued, with both sides citing broad statements of principle from the Vatican in order to bolster their case."

Pelosi even made a point of announcing the day before the liturgy that she planned to share in communion. So it is significant that when the pope had very public opportunities to adopt the conservative bishops' policy at his own liturgies, he declined.

These developments are also significant for interpreting what the pope meant April 16th when he asked the U.S. bishops: "Is it consistent for practicing Catholics...to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?" While the pope obviously disagrees with pro-choice politicians, evidently he does not mean to push his position to the point of denying them communion.

That at least is much more in keeping with the dialogue approach that Vatican II favored. As I noted in my post yesterday, the pope would gain from using that model across the board, rather than berating Catholics who have not been convinced by some of Rome's official positions.

Pope Benedict’s 'Consistent' Catholicism Is Not Consistent with Vatican II's

I am grateful to Washington Post syndicated columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. for highlighting the following statement that Pope Benedict XVI made to the U.S. Catholic bishops at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on April 16th. I didn’t see it covered anywhere else. Benedict asked:

“Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching, or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?”

The answer Benedict wants is “no.”

That, certainly, was the answer required of each of the bishops before they were promoted to their current jobs—almost all of them by Pope John Paul II or by Benedict himself. Of course, the answer could vary in intensity: U.S. Catholicism has devoted considerably more energy and resources to upholding the right to life than to effectively helping the poor and marginalized.

The answer I want to defend is “yes.”

It is, to be sure, a qualified yes. But the fact that it can be yes at all is the fundamental difference between my theological attitude toward the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the attitude of the two popes.

And that difference is why the way in which Benedict thinks the church should provide hope and leadership to the world is ultimately not productive, but the Vatican II model is.

The popes’ diagnosis is that the world is confused and grappling for answers in all the wrong places. The popes’ vision is that only official leadership of the Catholic Church has the divinely revealed absolute truths that provide the answers the world needs.

The Vatican II diagnosis—expressed in several of its documents but most pointedly and repeatedly in Gaudium et spes, its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World—agrees that human beings are searching for answers. In contrast, however, the answers are implanted in all of creation, in every human heart, in every human interaction, in every religion the Creator has inspired and in every human experience, yesterday, today and tomorrow.

The church in this model is the pilgrim people of God. Its calling is not to tell the world what the answers are, but by constant dialogue with human beings in all their social, political and religious groupings, to discover with them and to learn with greater and greater precision the answers we already have or that novel human creativity needs to craft.

Using the Vatican II model, the answers to Benedict’s questions become much more nuanced and thus more realistic.

“Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized?”

As the liberation theologians taught all of us, including Benedict, there is no doubt that the Christian calling requires a preferential option for the poor. Faithful Catholics cannot defend a stance that does nothing for the poor and the marginalized, let alone ignore them. But as Benedict himself shows by disagreeing with some of the concrete actions proposed by liberation theology, there are many different ways for Christians to work to improve the lot of the poor. It is not possible for the church to adopt a single set of solutions and characterize everything else as exploiting them.

The diversity of options comes to light when the church in the United States tries to defend the rights of immigrants. The pope is correct to insist that any immigration reform should respect the fundamental human right of families to remain together. But that guideline does not yield a monolithic U.S. Catholic answer for practicing Catholics to follow. Practicing Catholics conscientiously disagree on how to control our borders, address those who have crossed illegally, decide if U.S. employers should have a legal source of non-citizen labor, or prevent the problems of the last two decades from happening all over again.

“Is it consistent for practicing Catholics…to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching?”

If the Catholic moral teaching on sexual behavior were only that emphasized by recent popes, it would be inconsistent for practicing Catholics not to follow it and not to at least encourage others to. The fact is, however, that based on their personal experiences, practicing Catholics are persuaded conscientiously that the Catholic position should permit more alternatives than the popes want to allow. They do not buy the papal position that the only legitimate sexual behavior is in a marriage between one man and one woman where each instance is open to the production of offspring.

It is no secret that over several decades practicing U.S. Catholics have disagreed with the popes in increasing numbers on issues such as birth control, divorce and remarriage, sex before marriage, homosexuals’ right to express their love sexually and aspire to lasting unions, the value of priestly celibacy, and the exclusion of women from the priesthood.

What is inconsistent is not the steady, growing resistance of practicing Catholics to the narrow view of human sexuality the popes want to retain, but the popes’ refusal to acknowledge that most U.S. Catholics (as well as those in Europe and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere) have not found the papal teaching persuasive. Consistency requires the popes to listen to the experience of the faithful, not to dismiss it in favor of abstract philosophical positions that had started to unravel even before Vatican II.

“Is it consistent for practicing Catholics…to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?”

Here again the consistency issue is the failure of the popes to sell their position to enough practicing Catholics. The failure has been most conspicuous on the papal opposition to stem cell research and a more recent effort to mandate extraordinary end-of-life measures which even the most traditional Catholic theology did not require. But even on abortion, where the papal position has probably gained the most assent among practicing U.S. Catholics, only a slim majority of them favor imposing the official Catholic position on non-Catholic Americans.

The popes face a number of challenges if they want practicing Catholics to do more on these issues than they already have. One is basing their answer on when life begins on an arcane philosophical model that admits of multiple answers. Another is assuming that in a pluralistic democracy the church can demand that politicians who are practicing Catholics have an obligation to impose one of those answers as public policy. Another is assuming that Catholic politicians who believe conscientiously that other public policies do more to advance the papal position than imposing it are somehow not in communion with the church.

In short, what is consistent for practicing Catholics is for them to keep telling church officials when they find official positions defective—so that the officials can carry out their own duty to re-examine the soundness of their positions or their effectiveness in trying to communicate them.

Berating practicing Catholics for being unconvinced is unlikely convince many more.

Pope's Handling of Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis Is Surprising, and Most Encouraging

Pope Benedict XVI has surprised just about everyone with how candidly, compassionately and effectively he has dealt with the clergy sex abuse crisis during his trip to the United States this week. Publicly and privately he took several actions that demonstrate beyond doubt that he has personally reviewed several of the victims' cases and was profoundly moved by how badly the Catholic Church treated them.

He made a point of talking about it as one of only four topics he addressed during his flight. He told the U.S. bishops they had handled the entire affair very badly and they needed to improve their administrative and pastoral response to it. He asked the 45,000 people who attended his liturgy in Washington Nationals stadium to take an active role in the pastoral response. Then, in the biggest surprise of all, he met privately with a few of the victims and Cardinal Sean O'Malley from the Boston archdiocese, where the nationwide scandal began. O'Malley said he gave the pope a notebook that listed all of the Boston victims by name--more than 1,000 in all--and asked the pope to remember them in his prayers.

For many it was a surprise that the pope mentioned the topic at all. Even better was the manner in which he discussed it, saying forthrightly how shameful it was and how committed he is to preventing such abuse from ever happening again. For the victims and the millions of U.S. Catholics who share their pain, it was probably the most encouraging week of his papacy.

As the victims' advocates have pointed out, what is needed for the encouragement to last is for the pope to commence the long-delayed final act in this sad drama: publicly holding accountable the bishops who enabled the sexual predators by transferring them from parish to parish so that they could find fresh victims to prey over. They should include Cardinal Bernard Law, archbishop of Boston during much of the time the predators reigned, who now languishes in a cushy job at the Vatican; and Cardinal Roger Mahoney, Archbishop of Los Angeles, who was not too busy building a multi-million dollar cathedral to spend years obstructing disclosure and prosecution of the predators he supervised.

The pope's surprising, encouraging actions merit sustained applause. He has given the victims the first real hope they have had in decades. If he wants to keep that hope alive, he needs to teach the bishops how grievously they erred and how important it is for them to face the consequences of their shameful behavior.

Poland Helps Jews Honor 65th Anniversary of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Against Nazis

The Associated Press and MSNBC report that in Warsaw today Polish officials hosted Israeli President Shimon Perez and Jews from several countries to honor the memory of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi troops, 65 years ago this week. The AP report says:

"The uprising was the first act of large-scale armed civilian resistance against the Germans in occupied Poland during World War II. On April 19, 1943, German troops started to liquidate the ghetto by sending tens of thousands of its residents to death camps. Several hundred young Jews took to arms in defense of the civilians. Outnumbered and outgunned, they held off German troops for three weeks with homemade explosives and a cache of smuggled weapons. The Nazis killed most of fighters and then burned down the ghetto street by street."

At the start of World War II the Jewish community in Warsaw alone numbered 400,000--the largest in Europe and behind New York the second largest in the world. This week's ceremonies began at the site where the Nazis sent more than 350,000 Jews by train to the Treblinka death camp, 60 miles to the Northeast.

The picture above shows Cantor Joseph Malovany from New York singing a prayer in front of the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes monument. Poland's chief orthodox rabbi, Michael Schudrich, read out the Kaddish, or Jewish prayer for the dead.

Survivor Hela Rufeisen, who took part in the fight as an 18-year-old and lived to tell about it, was one of the few ghetto-uprising survivors to attend.

The AP reported that "on Saturday, the last surviving leader of the ghetto's struggle, 89-year-old Marek Edelman, will lay flowers at the ghetto monument, and the Jewish community is planning a seder meal in memory of the ghetto victims."

Broadcasts Give More Really Convincing Reasons to Stop Adding Bodies to the Planet

ABC News, 20/20 and National Geographic have teamed up for broadcasts tonight and Sunday that paint a really ugly picture of how much the average American consumes and throws away from cradle to grave.

On ABC World News tonight, 20/20 later this evening, and the National Geographic Channel on Sunday, the broadcasters will show stark visual displays of the nearly 4,000 disposable diapers the typical U.S. child will go through; the 13,000 plus pints of milk and almost 90,000 slices of bread each of us consumes; the 22,500 gallons of water each of us drinks and the additional 28,000 gallons each of us showers away.

The reports estimates that if everyone on the planet lived like us, we'd need four or five more planets just to produce the resources and bury the waste. The point is to encourage modest cuts in U.S. consumption.

But doesn't all this argue--again--that it's time for us to stop adding bodies to the planet, until we can sustain the needs of the people we already have?

Like 5th Circuit, Louisiana Supreme Court Says Insurance Did Not Cover Levee Breaches

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that on April 8th the Louisiana Supreme Court, in a major post-Katrina decision, decided that insurance policies that did not cover flood damage also did not cover the levee breaches that flooded 80% of New Orleans. The decision overruled two lower courts and basically agreed with an earlier ruling by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The report emphasized that the Louisiana Supreme Court ruling was even more important than the 5th Circuit's, "because state law holds sway in insurance disputes."

The ruling again seems to point to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as the only entity that might be held responsible for the massive loss of property and life caused by the levee breaches. So far, however, the Corps has proved all too adept at preventing itself from getting sued. Excerpts from the article follow:

The court said the lower courts should have looked at the "plain, ordinary and generally prevailing definition" of the word "flood."

"Contrary to the court of appeal's reasoning, this definition (of 'flood') does not change or depend on whether the event is a natural disaster or a man-made one -- in either case, a large amount of water covers an area that is usually dry," the Supreme Court opinion said.

Justice Chet Traylor of Winnsboro, writing the majority decision, went a step further, saying the flooding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was not caused by man, only aided by human errors.

"The flood was caused by Hurricane Katrina, not by man," Traylor wrote. "The levees did not cause the flood, they, whether through faulty design, faulty construction, or some other reason, failed to prevent the flood."

Attorney John Houghtaling , who joined the lawsuit on behalf of the state of Louisiana, said, "This is the end of the road here. This is a very, very sad day for anyone who isn't an insurance executive."

Houghtaling said he was "shocked by the ruling" and thought the insurance industry had "pulled the wool over the eyes of another court." In addition to 1,500 homeowners Houghtaling represented against insurers, he was also retained by former Attorney General Charles Foti to argue that the state's Road Home program, which uses federal taxpayer dollars to cover gaps in insurance payments, should be reimbursed for at least $1 billion it paid for water damage homeowner policies should have covered.

Houghtaling's firm noted that in 2004, the industry asked the state insurance commissioner to approve new policy language making it clear that water from levee breaches wasn't covered in homeowner policies. Houghtaling said that proved the industry knew that previous policy language -- which remained in use by all but two firms at the time of Hurricane Katrina -- was ambiguous. The Supreme Court didn't address that argument in its ruling.

Shoah and Nakba Are Both Atrocities, and Neither Justifies Denying the Other

Widely respected Catholic theologian Rosemary Radford Ruther has an excellent piece in the April 4th National Catholic Reporter on the seemingly endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She says the major obstacle to resolving it is that both sides refuse to grant validity to the other's painful past.

Ruther, a regular contributor to NCR, is the Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA (from which I earned my Ph.D.). She acknowledges there are legitimate historical reasons for Israelis and Palestinians to despise each other, but that neither group bears sole responsibility for that history--and the Palestinian connection is especially remote.

Today's Palestinians have no direct responsibility for the Holocaust, known in Israel as the Shoah. As Iranian President Ahmadinejad is fond of pointing out, it was a crime perpetrated against Jews by the West, directly by Germany but with the complicity of every Western country that failed to stop it, including the United States. The closest the Palestinians get to responsibility is ancestors several centuries ago who drove the Jews from Palestine, forcing them into Europe and eventually the Western Hemisphere. Today's Palestinians are beneficiaries of that history. But it's a very unreasonable stretch to find them personally liable for it.

Yet, as Ruther emphasizes, the Shoah was used "as a claim to a unique entitlement of the Jewish people to a state built on Arab land." After the 1948-49 Israeli war of independence, the United Nations, largely to assuage the guilt of its Western founders, awarded Israel 54% of Palestine. It eventually grew to 73%. The Palestinian objection, also voiced by Ahmadinejad, is legitimate: "if you (the West) have committed this huge crime, why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for it." Thus the Muslim hatred for the West is rooted in the fact that the Palestinians have had to pay much more dearly for the West's Holocaust than any people in the West.

Ruther says the Palestinians refer to the confiscation of their land as al Nakba (the catastrophe). The Nakba refers not only to the loss of territory, but to the 800,000 Palestinians who fled for their lives or were forcibly expelled from their towns and villages during the 1948-49 war, becoming refugees in Jordon, Lebanon and Egypt or internal refugees in Israel. Palestinians see the catastrophe as on-going and escalating today, with every new expropriation of their land and strategies like the wall built around Palestinian parts of the West Bank, designed as they see it to make their lives so intolerable they will have to leave.

Some of today's Israelis would argue that they are not directly responsible for the Nakba. And those who have opposed the progressive confiscation of Palestinian land would have a point. But as descendants or beneficiaries of the Zionists who basically conquered Palestine in 1949, the majority of today's Israelis have a much more proximate responsibility for the Nakba than today's Palestinians have for the Shoah. Those most directly responsible are those who support more appropriation of Palestinian land.

The Zionists, to be sure, operated from the conviction that another Holocaust could not be prevented unless the Jews reestablished Israel as their homeland in Palestine. But it was wrong of the Zionists and wrong of the United Nations to insist that the only way to achieve a Jewish state was to confiscate half or three-quarters of Palestine. That judgment does not deny the reality or the enormity of the Shoah. It does deny that the Shoah gave the Jews or the UN an entitlement to do what was done to the Palestinians.

Of course, the Palestinians and their sympathizers have made it a point to inflict some pain on the United States and Western Europe for their role in the Nakba. But a real resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be possible until all of the parties stop denying the two atrocities done to Jews and Palestinians and the West's heavy responsibility for both of them. The way forward must compensate both Jews and Palestinians equitably and the compensation must come in some major way from the West.

Ruther sees the way forward foreshadowed by Khaled Muhameed, a Muslim Palestinian who has opened his own small Holocaust museum in Nazareth. It has pictures of Jews suffering in Europe during the Nazi era. It also has pictures of the Palestinian refugees from the 1948-49 war. Only when other Palestinians and Jews honestly acknowledge the suffering of both peoples can a real peace process begin.

Ruther's closing paragraph states the case exactly: "Clearly what is needed is a break-through to a compassionate sense of co-humanity in which Israelis and Palestinians can mourn each other's disasters and refuse to use one disaster to justify another."

Chertoff Breaks 34 Laws to Build Wall Against "Criminal Activity at the Border"

I applaud the Houston Chronicle's editorial Bulldozing the laws, which calls on Congress to act at once to reverse the "irresponsible grant of power" it gave Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff "to bypass all laws deemed obstacles to the expeditious construction of a security fence along the southern border with Mexico."

The editorial exposes the utter stupidity, arrogance and hypocrisy of those who see no higher priority than halting every "illegal" immigrant trying to gain access from our impoverished neighbor to the south--even if Chertoff has to violate 34 other federal laws to do so. Let's promote our blessed respect for the law by violating 34 of them! Let's trample decades of environmental protections, wildlife conservation projects, property rights statutes and court rulings to protect the sovereignty of the United States! Shouldn't that tell us how wrong-headed and dangerous the wall idea is?

I would add just one thought to the editorial: if Congress does not act quickly, impacted parties should seek an emergency restraining order against Chertoff in federal court, on the grounds that he is wildly exceeding the legislative intent of the waiver Congress allowed him for one specific space on the border. The editorial follows:

When Congress passed the Real ID Act three years ago, it included a little debated provision, section 102, giving the Homeland Security secretary extraordinary power to bypass all laws deemed obstacles to the expeditious construction of a security fence along the southern border with Mexico.

As is becoming increasingly obvious, it was an irresponsible grant of power by people elected to respect and defend the Constitution and our system of laws. They should have known better.

In his fourth exercise of the waiver provision, on April Fool's Day, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the broadest assertion of authority yet, declaring that 34 federal laws would be ignored in order to complete nearly 500 miles of fencing that will impact environmentally sensitive areas in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. The move will allow authorities to proceed with fence construction without issuing final environmental impact statements for which millions of taxpayer dollars have already been spent.

"Criminal activity at the border does not stop for endless debate or protracted litigation," stated Chertoff. "Congress and the American public have been adamant that they want and expect border security. We're serious about delivering it, and these waivers will enable important security projects to keep moving forward."

The waiver was initially promoted by congressional supporters as a limited exception designed to give federal officials flexibility in speeding the completion of a segment of fencing across environmentally sensitive wetlands near San Diego.

Unfortunately, as with so many other instances in which the Bush administration has asserted the right to ignore laws it found inconvenient, the waiver now is being used as an all-purpose bludgeon to flatten dozens of environmental and property rights statutes.

Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, chairman of a coalition of Texas border community officials, says the decision to override existing laws indicates that those incomplete environmental studies would have documented serious problems created by the fence construction, because "otherwise, the federal government wouldn't have to resort to such drastic measures." A spokesman for Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne confirmed that under existing legal requirements, the agency could not grant approvals to allow DHS to construct infrastructure on Interior Department border lands.

Earlier this month, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deputy director Kenneth Stansell warned in a letter to the executive director of the federal Customs and Border Protection agency that a new design for fence segments in Hidalgo County in South Texas would undermine a quarter-century of work in creating a 300-mile wildlife corridor. That land has helped conserve more than 20 endangered species that migrate between the U.S. and Mexico. According to Stansell, substituting an impermeable 16- to 18-foot wall built atop flood levees for a wildlife-friendly structure that allows small animals to pass through will impair the purpose of the wildlife corridor. Invoking the waiver stifles legal opposition to that reasonable alternative plan.

Already, managers of two South Texas nature refuges, the Sabal Palm Audubon Center and the Nature Conservancy Preserve, say the waivers will effectively close their facilities because their property would be isolated in a zone between Mexico and the fence.

The multibillion-dollar plan to erect a wall on the border was flawed from the beginning. Its folly now is being compounded by a calculated effort to undermine the precious system of laws that provide our real bulwark against tyranny. Congress should never have granted such power, and it must act promptly to minimize the damage by repealing the Real ID Act waiver.