Burke also said, "We find ourselves at a turning point in which forces within the hierarchy are seeking to derail much of what has occurred," reported Janega, whose web-located story is a corrected version of his hard-copy story of 9/21. That’s 21st-century journalism, by the way: you don’t just live with incomplete reporting, adding a brief correction buried in the run of paper, but you fix the story up as it’s to be viewed and consulted by thousands of readers. "This story contains corrected material," the web version says.
Butler in The New World, however, has Burke comparing church and Chicago politics, with Chicago’s looking better: "Nothing – I will say this again – nothing could have adequately prepared me for [my] encounter with the politics of the institutional church. . . . I have been around Chicago politics for a long time [her husband Ed Burke heads the city council’s finance committee and is Chicago’s most powerful alderman and son of an alderman] . . . But the machinations encountered in the ecclesiastical version during this period of fear, perplexity and suspicion was at times medieval, certainly Byzantine."
The encounters she spoke of were a mixed lot, ranging from "suspicions of some bishops and the downright vengeance of others" to meeting "holy men, heartsick at the damage" of the scandal, Burke said.
WHO PAYS THE BILLS? . . . Burke’s term is up, and in replacing her and others, bishops proposed or were about to propose a nun [she has declined, citing the division her membership would cause], even though it’s a job for which only lay people need apply. In so doing they used a lay-clergy distinction rather than lay-religious, as if a nun would be as independent as a lay person not employed by the church. But nuns answer to superiors, who answer to bishops and pope, with resulting impairment of independence.
The same would go for a layman who works for the church, such as the lay chancellor of the archdiocese of Chicago, who would not be considered free to call them as he saw them. Independence is the requirement for review board membership – not being part of the network, as it were.
WITH ALL HER FAULTS, WE LOVE HER STILL . . . Loyola U was wrong to honor Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, stepdaughter of State Senate President and Illinois powerhouse Mike Madigan and alum of Chicago Latin School, says Guy J. Cesario Jr., of Oak Lawn, in an Oct. 10 letter to Catholic New World. He calls it "an outrage" that the law school is giving its Bellarmine award to Madigan, "an outspoken advocate of abortion rights" – over Cardinal Francis George’s objections, he adds.
"If for no other reason, that [she] is the state’s first female attorney general," she deserves the award, counters Tina Johns, of Darien, in another letter. She’s a ladyyyyyyy!
Madigan is truly pro-abortion, that is, choice, as was clear in the avid support she got from pro-ab forces in her 2002 campaign. Start with Planned (now Aborted) Parenthood of Illinois, which rejoiced in her promise to shut down crisie pregnancy counseling centers, as her New York counterpart Elliott Spitzer had tried to do. The objection was that they misrepresent themselves to the pregnant and lure them into compromising positions as regards snuffing their unborn. Clergy, butt out, you know. It’s the doctor who matters.
And what do you know, Catholic New World a few pages later has an extensive story about crisis pregnancy centers, "where ‘choice’ means it," per its head. This is Respect Life Month, I read on the same page, which was news to me, who has apparently been paying inadequate attention.
TEN OUR FATHERS FOR YOU, BUSTER . . . In his memoir My Life (Knopf), Clinton called his sex-capades "inappropriate," notes reviewer Michael O’Brien in Times Literary Supplement 8/27/04. But no Southern Baptist sinner – the role C. assigns himself – "should stand up in a back-country pew and exclaim, ‘Lord! Lord! I have been inappropriate,’" says O’Brien.
THE MODERN CHURCH AT PRAYER . . . Warmup for a recent RC funeral mass included an organ-ized rendition of "All the Things You Are" – lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II – from the loft. Only the music (by Jerome Kern) was played, however. The words go this way and were applicable to the deceased or to Jesus, though that would be a major surprise to Hammerstein:
You are the promised kiss of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long.
You are the breathless hush of evening
That trembles on the brink of a lovely song.
You are the angel glow – that lights a star.
The dearest things I know – are what you are.
One day my happy arms will hold you
And someday I'll know that moment divine
When all the things you are are mine.
Ain’t liturgy grand?
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Jim Bowman
Oak Park, IL
www.jimbowman.comAvailable:
* At Xlibris.com: Priests at Work: Catholic Pastors Tell How They Apply Church Law in Difficult Cases, by Jim Bowman. (Formerly Bending the Rules: What American Priests Tell American Catholics), $18.69 in paper.
* At Amazon.com: Good Guys Finish First: Reflections of a CEO and How to Start a De Novo Community Bank, By C. Paul Johnson with Jim Bowman, $22.99 & $32.99.
posted by Jim Bowman @ 10/26/2004 05:03:00 PM
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