Word came today of the death Saturday of Larry Hawk, a former colleague of mine on McDonald Borough Council. He was 75.
Richard Mellon Scaife has a column in today's Tribune-Review on his meeting this week with Senator Hillary Clinton.The very morning that she came to the Trib, our editorial page raised questions about her campaign and criticized her on several other scores.
Reading that, a lesser politician -- one less self-assured, less informed on domestic and foreign issues, less confident of her positions -- might well have canceled the interview right then and there.
Sen. Clinton came to the Trib anyway and, for 90 minutes, answered questions.
Her meeting and her remarks during it changed my mind about her.
Walking into our conference room, not knowing what to expect (or even, perhaps, expecting the worst), took courage and confidence. Not many politicians have political or personal courage today, so it was refreshing to see her exhibit both.
Sen. Clinton also exhibited an impressive command of many of today's most pressing domestic and international issues. Her answers were thoughtful, well-stated, and often dead-on.
Too often people assume that nuns are women who couldn’t “get a guy” or who broke up with someone they thought was “the one” and was left with no alternative. Nuns are also stereotyped as sexually repressed, dowdy women who lack passion and care only about piety, cleanliness and order.
On the contrary …Women do not become nuns because they had a bad relationship or because they don’t like sexual activity/energy or because they "can’t get a guy". Nuns are women who would have made wonderful lovers, wives, and mothers. Still we choose to respond to God’s call to a different way of life, a way of life that is just as full and natural as single or married life.
Today is the 2nd Sunday of Easter or what Catholics call "Divine Mercy Sunday." The Gospel at Mass brings us Jesus appearing to his disciples and the story of "Doubting Thomas".
Some folks at the NYU Psychology Department are in need of people to take a fairly quick on-line survey.
An aside: While Indiana's State House is certainly quite nice, the Keystone State still has 'em beat.
This evening, we arrived in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Tonight (yesterday technically), I attended the Easter Vigil Mass at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on Manhattan's West Side.
It was a powerful liturgy that included the service of light and the blessing of the Easter candle; the singing of the Exsultet (sample in the clip above); the seven readings from scripture accompanied by beautifully sung psalms; and the welcoming of eight new people into the Church.
I served as a sponsor for one of the men who received the Sacrament of Confirmation and came into full communion with the Church. This was my fourth time serving as a confirmation sponsor but my first time doing so for an adult who had gone through the R.C.I.A. program. It was a great blessing to to me personally.
The Gospel at the Vigil Mass was from Matthew Chapter 28:
After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.
And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, approached, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing was white as snow.
The guards were shaken with fear of him and became like dead men. Then the angel said to the women in reply, “Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ Behold, I have told you.”
Then they went away quickly from the tomb, fearful yet overjoyed, and ran to announce this to his disciples.
And behold, Jesus met them on their way and greeted them.
They approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage.
Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
Today is Good Friday. Today, we remember the execution approximately 2,000 years ago of a carpenter from a remote outpost of the Roman Empire. It is an event that changed all of human history and, for believers, human nature itself.
For those interested in the life and writings of Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968), a Trappist monk who is regarded by many as one of the great spiritual writers of the 20th century, today is an important anniversary.Yesterday, in Louisville, at the corner of 4th and Walnut, suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were, or, could be totally alien to me. As if waking from a dream—the dream of separateness, of the “special” vocation to be different. My vocation does not really make me different from the rest of men or put me is a special category except artificially, juridically. I am still a member of the human race—and what more glorious destiny is there for man, since the Word was made flesh and became, too, a member of the Human Race!
Thank God! Thank God! I am only another member of the human race, like all the rest of them. I have the immense joy of being a man! As if the sorrows of our condition could really matter, once we begin to realize who and what we are—as if we could ever begin to realize it on earth.
A blessed St. Patrick's Day to all!
This weekend, I was in Philadelphia with Anthony and Heather for a long overdue visit with Sr. Thomasmari Gore, M.S.B.T., who was our campus minister at the Catholic Center at New York University in the '90s.
She became a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development on setting up a village credit program, then a Ford Foundation program officer in Jakarta specializing in women’s work. Later, she was a consultant in Pakistan, then joined Indonesia’s oldest bank to work on what is described as the world’s largest sustainable microfinance program, creating services like credit and savings for the poor.
Visitors flowed constantly through her Ford Foundation office in downtown Jakarta and through her house in a neighborhood to the south, where papaya and banana trees grew in the front yard and Javanese dishes like opor ayam were served for dinner. Her guests were leaders in the Indonesian human rights movement, people from women’s organizations, representatives of community groups doing grass-roots development.
“I didn’t know a lot of them and would often ask after, ‘Who was that?’ ” said David S. McCauley, now an environmental economist at the Asian Development Bank in Manila, who had the office next door. “You’d find out it was the head of some big organization in with thousands of members from central Java or someplace, somebody that she had met some time ago, and they would make a point of coming to see her when they came to Jakarta.”
No more electing prosecutors to high office, people. Too high strung.
An aside: I have two friends who grew up in Scranton. One, a woman in her early 20s who just moved back to Scranton after a year-plus of living in NYC, is supporting Senator Barack Obama. The other, an attorney in her 50s who now lives in Western Pennsylvania, is a die-hard Republican who would never cast a vote for the former First Lady. A small sampling to be sure, but I thought I'd share.Mrs. Clinton’s great-grandparents came to Scranton in the 1880s in steerage from Wales. Her grandfather, Hugh S. Rodham, began work as a boy at the Scranton Lace Company, once the world’s largest producer of Nottingham lace, now a shuttered hulking behemoth, on track to be redeveloped as an arts space and apartments. Mr. Rodham and his wife, Hannah, raised three boys here, including Hillary’s father, Hugh E. Rodham, who went to Penn State University, where he played football (and made bathtub gin, according to his daughter).
“The Scranton of my father’s youth was a rough industrial city of brick factories, textile mills, coal mines, rail yards and wooden duplex houses,” Mrs. Clinton wrote in her memoir, “Living History.”
After so many years of learning the nuances of Pennsylvania politics and its varied players, I have to concede that, when I moved to New York last year, I was in no hurry to study up on the Empire State's machinations.
By Sunday morning, the fog lifted:
During the retreat, we contemplated the Gospel at Mass for the fifth Sunday of Lent. It was the detailed and emotional story of Jesus raising his friend, Lazarus, from the dead.
From John Chapter 11:
Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.
So the sisters sent word to him saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.”
So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”
But Jesus was talking about his death, while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.
So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.”
So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go to die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home.
Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”
When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying, “The teacher is here and is asking for you.”
As soon as she heard this, she rose quickly and went to him. For Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still where Martha had met him.
So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her, presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Sir, come and see.”
And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”
But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”
So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.”
Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone.
And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.”
And when he had said this, He cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth.
So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”
Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.
I think his natural inclination would have been to go for John McCain. But, that would have been John McCain in 2000, when he was still talking straight: Jerry Falwell was an agent of intolerance, and waterboarding is torture. McCain going back on those two key points would have certainly kept Alex from pulling the lever for him now.
I think Ron Paul’s message is one that would resonate with Alex. And he would appreciate Paul’s intellectual power and his willingness to state his positions unequivocally and without regard to which way the political winds were blowing. I think he’d really like Mike Huckabee’s ideas of getting rid of the IRS. (I know I do.) But ultimately Alex likes to win, and I think that would have kept him from fully committing to either of those guys.
Hillary Clinton? I have to disclose that I’ve known Hillary Clinton for more than 20 years. I think she’s a warm, funny and caring person of formidable intelligence. I admire her, and I would love to be able to say that Alex would vote for her. But I don’t think it could happen.
So what about Barack Obama? I honestly don’t know. I think Alex is an independent now, and as deeply engaged in politics as ever. He would be intrigued by Obama — impressed with his eloquence and intelligence. He would be unhappy with his plan to tax the wealthy at a higher rate, but keenly aware that eight years of neglect and corruption and no-bid contracts have to somehow be overturned. And, I think Obama’s slogan is very similar to Alex’s own personal mantra: “Of Course I Can.”
This weekend, we are in Anaheim, CA, for the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. At about 40,000 attendees, it's the largest annual gathering of Catholics in the United States.
