July 2007

Last night I cooked dinner at the Catholic Worker here, and emerged from the kitchen to find a huge crowd assembled in the backyard for the meal. My heart filled with joy and I boomed out, “Happy Sunday!”

An Italian, in town for a conference, came up to me afterwards to remark that Buona Domenica is an established greeting, but that he’d never heard an English speaker say “Happy Sunday.” He said that Italians also say buona continuazione (happy continuance?), and buon proseguimento, which translates roughly as “happy follow-through” or “happy proceeding.” Also, they say buon lavorno for “happy work.”

I cooked pizza and white-bean-and-pasta soup. The pizza recipe is mostly from Cooks Illustrated. The soup is a white-bean-and-roasted-garlic soup from Isa Chandra Moskowitz, with a bag of pasta thrown in.

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This morning I attended the beginning of a Mennonite-Catholic theological conference at Notre Dame. It centers on the document Called Together To Be Peacemakers. This document does a good job comparing and contrasting the two faiths; I recommend it. The proceedings of the conference will soon be available at the conference website.

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You ever have one of those days when you’re hungover and sweeping out a soup kitchen, and feel like life is a burden, and then a ragged, weathered man sits down at the piano and riffs on “Let It Be” for 20 minutes, and the burden floats away? I love that.

Mr. Hetero’s final chapter
Worcester Magazine notes that Tom “Mr Hetero” Crouse has dropped his lawsuit against the City, in which he claimed he was coerced into paying for a huge police detail to protect his “Mr. Hetero” pageant (see City documents for more). The City Solicitor writes:

The suit was dismissed by Rev. Crouse when it became apparent in depositions that Mechanics Hall, acting as his agent and fearing that the agreed upon number of police officers would not be sufficient to protect event attendees, actually requested additional paid-duty police officers above and beyond the number recommended by and agreed-to by Rev. Crouse and Mechanics Hall for the event to further ensure the safety of event attendees.

Earlier in his statement, the City Solicitor engages in fantasy:

Attendance at both the event and the protests was far less than expected due for the most part because February 18, 2006 turned out to be one of the coldest days of the winter.

There’s no evidence that the weather was the key factor; days before the event, Worcester Magazine was reporting that advance ticket sales were extremely low. For February, the weather was actually pretty nice; at least there wasn’t a blizzard or icy roads.
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In Trinity Term 2007, I took a course called Introductory Certificate in Management. I recognized that there were three parts in what was introduced in the course:

1. the questions asked and issues raised (“How to get things to happen”), or, in academic speech, “problematizing” (so far so good);
2. the mechanisms proposed (not so convincing); and
3. the evidence supporting the mechanisms proposed (not so sure).

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Now that the Miro media player has gotten really good, I encourage my friends to download it. They’re always a bit disoriented at first. What are you supposed to do with this thing?

Well, here’s how I use it. (If you’re totally confused, watch this video.)
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From July 18, 2007, here’s a talk by Notre Dame’s Mike Baxter on “American Catholic Agonistes: The Political Divide of Liberal and Conservative Catholicism.”

Due to technical problems, the last few minutes of the talk weren’t recorded.

Download the mp3, see other formats, or subscribe to the podcast feed.

American Catholic Agonistes [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today let us remember San Bartolomé de las Casas OP, patron saint of the Americas and all Indigenous Peoples.

The Catholic Peace Fellowship posted the audio of their 2007 conference months ago, but I missed the announcement, so maybe you did too.

[Podcast feed]

Catholic Peace Fellowship co-founder Jim Forest: mp3

Merton noticed that when compassion and love are absent, actions that are superficially nonviolent tend to mask deep hostility, contempt, and the desire to defeat and humiliate the opponent.

My housemate, CPF head Mike Baxter: mp3

. . . the division besetting the churches is the product of the absorption of those churches into the U.S. mainstream, and, more particularly, into the political culture of the United States. The result is that the word of Christ and the way of discipleship gets tamed, watered-down, domesticate, so that non-Catholics—good Catholics, sincere Catholics, committed Catholics—imagine they must choose between thee two false and, quite honestly, unfaithful alternatives.

Catholic conscientious objector Joshua Casteel: mp3

Catholic conscientious objector Jonathan Lace: mp3

My housemate, Catholic conscientious objector Daniel Baker: mp3

Someone asked me in one of the classes, yesterday or the day before, “Do you think that there are vocations for this kind of thing? Do you think God provides people vocations for the military?” And I think that God does. But not for the institutions that we have. Not for this military. I think that there are vocations to defend people. To defend those who cannot defend themselves. However, I think the goal is to create those organizations, like this one, those institutions where those people can serve honestly for humanity, with their skills, their gifts that God gave them, and really make a difference without having to resort to violence.

In the same week when His Holiness Benedict XVI was reiterating the alleged “defectus” of us “ecclesial communities of the Reformation”, I went to the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church in Manchester, where we headed each set of agenda with the question “What are the ecumenical implications of this?”
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A Dark Day for the Church in the United States

by Robert Waldrop, Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House

Comes now the news that the Archbishop for Military Services, the Most Reverend Edwin O’Brien, has been appointed as the new Archbishop of Baltimore.

Is this a message from Rome to the Catholic peace movement: “Go to hell”?

O’Brien has been an key supporter of the unjust war on the people of Iraq from the beginning. He criticized Bishop Botean for his courageous statement that participation in the war on the people of Iraq was the moral equivalent of willing participation in an abortion.

As the Archbishop for Military Services, O’Brien preached a gospel of moral laxism and relativism, claiming that we should “trust” our leaders instead of judging the war by the criteria of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He gave tacit ecclesiastical permission for Catholic members of the armed forces to participate in a manifestly unjust war. To this day, he continues to call for a “responsible transition” and thus turns his back on the suffering people of Iraq, condemning them to more death, more suffering, more murder.

In his Memorial Day message this year (2007), Archbishop O’Brien says that “at no time has the Holy See or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops cast doubt on the motives of our national leadership in the Executive or Congressional branches.” This is undoubtedly true, but should we trust the opinions of our bishops on issues of such consequence, given the extent that they themselves have embraced the culture of death? Ask the victims of the clergy sexual abuse crisis about the “judgement” of the U.S. Catholic bishops. Plenty of other people have rightfully questioned the motives of President Bush and the members of Congress who voted for this unjust war. But those pro-life opinions don’t count to the Archbishop of Baltimore.

In any event, hundreds of thousands of people are dead. Their blood is upon Archbishop O’Brien and upon all the other bishops who preached a false gospel of moral laxism and relativism and thus gave tacit permission to wage this unjust war. We should remember that unjust war is always and in every circumstance an objective evil.

The Catholic members of the Armed Forces of the United States of America, who are brave and generous in offering their lives in service to their country, deserved better than to be sold down the river with honeyed words of religious deceit from their own archbishop.

Now he has been seated upon the cathedra of the “mother church” of this country.

What a dark and dismal day this is for the Church in the United States.

“The road to hell is paved with the bones of priests and lined with the skulls of bishops.” St. John Chrysostom, 4th Century AD

“Meanwhile I saw wicked men approach and enter; and as they left the sacred place, they were praised in the city for what they had done. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against evildoers is not promptly executed, therefore the hearts of men are filled with the desire to commit evil – because the sinner does evil a hundred times and survives. Though indeed I know that it shall be well with those who fear God, for their reverence toward him; and that it shall not be well with the wicked man, and he shall not prolong his shadowy days, for his lack of reverence toward God. This is a vanity which occurs on earth: there are just men treated as though they had done evil and wicked men treated as though they had done justly. This, too, I say is vanity.” Ecclesiastes 8:10-14.

Robert Waldrop

Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City

www.justpeace.org/onpilgrimage.htm

Greetings from the South Bend Catholic Worker. This summer I hope to blog more about activism/religion/hospitality, and less about community media and Worcester.

Milton Valencia
I’ve been told that Milton Valencia is no longer writing for the Worcester T&G, and has moved on to the Boston Globe. This is a big loss for Worcester, as he’s been one of only a handful of local journalists who take the job seriously. Best wishes and godspeed.

Peace Pilgrim
Speaking of community media and Worcester, here’s a WCCA story about a woman following in the footsteps of Peace Pilgrim.

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