Category Archives: Faith

‘No Irish Need Apply:’ Myth of victimization?

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I read something that surprised me this morning, in a book review in The Wall Street Journal. As is fairly typical in opinion pieces in the Journal, the reviewer repeatedly expressed disdain for the author of a book about Irish politics in Boston whenever he failed to be insufficiently conservative (praising him for not dwelling on the Kennedys, castigating him for insufficiently respecting the Southies who fought busing for integration). But I was startled by this revelation:

Unfortunately, Mr. O’Neill has produced a rather straightforward recapitulation of Irish politics in the Hub, sticking to the well-established narrative of mustache-twisting Brahmins (or “Yankee overlords,” in Mr. O’Neill’s phrasing) doing battle against spirited, rascally Irish politicians. Indeed, “Rogues and Redeemers” doesn’t so much upend myths as reinforce them. In Irish America, tales of rampant employment discrimination by Yankee businessmen, who posted signs warning “No Irish need apply” are accepted as gospel. Such anti-Irish bias, writes Mr. O’Neill, was “commonly found in newspapers” and became “so commonplace that it soon had an acronym: NINA.”

But according to historian Richard Jensen, there is almost no proof to support the claim that NINA was a common hiring policy in America. Mr. Jensen reported in the Journal of Social History in 2002 that “the overwhelming evidence is that such signs never existed” and “evidence from the job market shows no significant discrimination against the Irish.” The tale has been so thoroughly discredited that, in 2010, the humor magazine Cracked ranked it No. 2 on a list of “6 Ridiculous History Myths (You Probably Think Are True).” Mr. O’Neill doesn’t inspire confidence by faithfully accepting NINA as fact…

I spent a few moments just now checking to see to what extent it is true that the NINA phenomenon is a “myth” of victimization. What I found kept directing me to the aforementioned Mr. Jensen, whose article on the subject is much cited.

But even Jensen documents that some (although not many) ads saying “No Irish Need Apply” appeared in American newspapers during the period. And no one disputes that such prejudice against the Irish was common in Britain; the only debate has to do with the extent of the practice in this country.

From the Jensen article:

The NINA slogan seems to have originated in England, probably after the 1798 Irish rebellion. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries it was used by English to indicate their distrust of the Irish, both Catholic and Protestant. For example the Anglican bishop of London used the phrase to say he did not want any Irish Anglican ministers in his diocese. By the 1820s it was a cliché in upper and upper middle class London that some fussy housewives refused to hire Irish and had even posted NINA signs in their windows. It is possible that handwritten NINA signs regarding maids did appear in a few American windows, though no one ever reported one. We DO have actual newspaper want ads for women workers that specifies Irish are not wanted; they will be discussed below. In the entire file of the New York Times from 1851 to 1923, there are two NINA ads for men, one of which is for a teenager. Computer searches of classified help wanted ads in the daily editions of other online newspapers before 1923 such as the Booklyn Eagle, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune show that NINA ads for men were extremely rare–fewer than two per decade. The complete absence of evidence suggests that probably zero such signs were seen at commercial establishments, shops, factories, stores, hotels, railroads, union halls, hiring halls, personnel offices, labor recruiters etc. anywhere in America, at any time. NINA signs and newspaper ads for apartments to let did exist in England and Northern Ireland, but historians have not discovered reports of any in the United States, Canada or Australia. The myth focuses on public NINA signs which deliberately marginalized and humiliated Irish male job applicants. The overwhelming evidence is that such signs never existed.

Irish Americans all have heard about them—and remember elderly relatives insisting they existed. The myth had “legs”: people still believe it, even scholars. The late Tip O’Neill remembered the signs from his youth in Boston in 1920s; Senator Ted Kennedy reported the most recent sighting, telling the Senate during a civil rights debate that he saw them when growing up 5 Historically, physical NINA signs could have flourished only in intensely anti-Catholic or anti-Irish eras, especially the 1830—1870 period. Thus reports of sightings in the 1920s or 1930s suggest the myth had become so deeply rooted in Irish-American folk mythology that it was impervious to evidence…

Make of this what you will.

Personally, I think it unlikely that NO such signs existed. Given what we can see even today of nativist sentiment, and knowing the nation’s history of suspicion and even hostility toward Catholics, it seems almost certain that back in a day when the “n-word” invited no social ostracism, such alienation toward an outside group would have been expressed quite openly and without embarrassment. But I’m just extrapolating from known facts here. Jensen is right — neither I nor anyone else can produce physical evidence of such signs at worksites.

I suspect that the truth lies somewhere between the utter dismissal of the reviewer, and the deep resentment of alleged widespread practices that runs through the history of Southie politics.

I, too, once thought of JFK’s speech the way Santorum does (sort of). But then I read it…

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To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live in that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up…
— Rick Santorum

This tempest should be over now, especially since Santorum himself said of it, “I wish I had that particular line back.”

But since Bud mentioned it today on a previous post, and I read it again in The New Yorker while eating my lunch today, I thought I’d go ahead and say something that’s occurred to me several times in the last few days.

This sort of thing keeps happening. Someone running for president says something that I wouldn’t say, but I understand what he means, and what he means isn’t that awful — and the Chattersphere goes nuts over it, day after day, as though it were the most outrageous thing said in the history of the world.

It happened with Mitt Romney saying he wasn’t concerned about the poor. Obviously, he meant that there were mechanisms in place to help the poor, and that people like him didn’t need any help, but he was worried about the middle class. Not the best way to say it — and if he thinks the safety net makes it OK to be poor, he’s as wrong as he can be. But he was right to express worry about the state of the middle class, whatever he may imagine the remedies to be.

As for Santorum and the “throw-up” line. Well, to start with, I would  recommend that no one running for president ever say that something someone else says or believes makes him want “to throw up.” It makes him seem… overwrought. Not at all cool.  How can we trust him with that 3 a.m. phone call, with having his finger on the button, when he keeps running to the john to, in a memorable phrase I heard several years ago, “call Roark on the Big White Phone?”

That said, I get what he’s trying to say about the JFK speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. I used to have a similar response to it, although I was never in danger of losing my lunch. Matter of degree, I suppose. In any case, it put me off. Because, far from being an assertion of the legitimate difference between church and state, I had taken it as an assertion that JFK would not bring his deepest values into the public sphere. I further saw it as a sop to bigotry. If offended me to think of a Catholic giving the time of day to anyone so small-minded as to suppose that a mackerel-snapper couldn’t be a good president, much less trying to tell them what they wanted to hear. Altogether a shameful instance of a candidate putting winning ahead of everything. Or so I thought.

My reaction was somewhat like that of Santorum when he addressed the subject a couple of years ago:

Let me quote from the beginning of Kennedy’s speech: ‘I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.’

The idea of strict or absolute separation of church and state is not and never was the American model. …

That’s correct. There is no such “absolute” separation, and none was intended, except perhaps by Thomas Jefferson (who was not one of the Framers of our Constitution, FYI). Kennedy’s choice of the word “absolute” was unfortunate. Santorum went on:

Kennedy continued: ‘I believe in an America … where no Catholic prelate would tell the president — should he be Catholic — how to act … where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.’

Of course no religious body should ‘impose its will’ on the public or public officials, but that was not the issue then or now. The issue is one that every diverse civilization like America has to deal with — how do we best live with our differences.

There, I can really identify with what he’s saying. The paranoia toward the Church that Kennedy was addressing is so idiotic, so offensive, that one hates even to see it dignified with an answer.

As for the overall point — was JFK’s performance offensive or not? I once thought it was, although as I say, it didn’t make me physically ill. But that’s because I had never read the speech in its entirety, or heard it. I had simply relied on characterizations of it by others, and the way they presented it made it sound as though Kennedy were kowtowing to anti-Catholic  prejudice in a way that bothered me. Worse, there was this suggestion that he was pushing his faith away from him, suggesting that he would conduct himself in office as though he had no beliefs.

Implicit in all of it was the suggestion that faith had no place in the public sphere, which, like Santorum, I reject.

But then I read the speech. And I was really impressed:

The speech itself is so well-rounded, so erudite, so articulate, so thoughtful about the relationship between faith and political power in this country, that I find myself won over to a candidate who could give such a speech…

I then quoted an excerpt:

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end, where all men and all churches are treated as equals, where every man has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice, where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind, and where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, at both the lay and the pastoral levels, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe, a great office that must be neither humbled by making it the instrument of any religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding it — its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him¹ as a condition to holding that office.
I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty; nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it.
I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all and obligated to none, who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his office may appropriately require of him to fulfill; and whose fulfillment of his Presidential office is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.

I went on to wax nostalgic for a time when political candidates had the respect for the American people to speak to them that way. This was far, far from the simple “separation of church and state” speech that I had heard about.

Even before I read the speech, there was never a time that mention of it made me want to throw up. The worst thing I said about it was that “I don’t much like the way Kennedy did it.” But I did, like Santorum, have a negative conception of it.

The thing was, I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Don’t forget where the “Southern” comes from

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When I started reading the story on the front page of The State this morning about a proposal to change the name of the denomination from “Southern Baptist,” I assumed that the reason would be the convention’s roots in the pro-slavery cause.

So I was taken aback when the reason given in the AP story was concerns “that their name is too regional and impedes the evangelistic faith’s efforts to spread the Gospel worldwide.” That seemed an awfully vanilla way to put it.

I read on, expecting to find the part that dealt with the convention’s founding in 1845… and it wasn’t there at all. No mention of why Southern Baptists had split from other Baptists.

Then, when I went to find the story online to link to it in this post, I found the missing passage:

The Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845 when it split with northern Baptists over the question of whether slave owners could be missionaries. Draper said that history has left some people to have negative associations with the name.

Well, yeah.

AP stories are generally written in the “inverted pyramid” style, to make it easy for copy editors to cut from the bottom in making a story fit on a print page. But sometimes that doesn’t work. Sometimes a copy editor needs to read the whole story and think about what parts the reader can’t do without if he or she is to understand what’s going on. This is one of those cases.

The omission is more startling since someone thought to add a paragraph at the end telling how many Southern Baptists there are in South Carolina.

Of course, the blame doesn’t accrue entirely to the editor or page designer. This was a badly written AP story. The origins of the “Southern” identity should have been up top, rather than in the 14th graf. It was essential to understanding what the story was about.

Now, let me add that I don’t say any of this to condemn the convention, or the independent churches that belong to it. I do not mean to besmirch today’s Southern Baptists. My parents are Southern Baptists; I was baptized in Thomas Memorial Baptist Church.

But to fail to mention where the convention’s name came from in a story about a discussion of changing the name is like writing a history of Spanish Catholicism without mentioning the Inquisition, or the persecution of Jews and Muslims under Their Most Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabela. Actually, you could even say it’s worse than that in terms of relevance, since the story was specifically about the name.

Given The State‘s usual interest in the history of slavery and Jim Crow (particularly during Black History Month), I was surprised by this omission.

Like Mitt Romney really needed this today…

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Elie Wiesel, seen in a file photo with an area man.

If we’re not having a Kulturkampf in one direction, it’s coming at us from another:

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor who has devoted his life to combating intolerance, says Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “should speak to his own church and say they should stop” performing posthumous proxy baptisms on Jews.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner spoke to The Huffington Post Tuesday soon after HuffPost reported that according to a formerly-Mormon researcher, Helen Radkey, some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had submitted Wiesel’s name to a restricted genealogy website as “ready” for posthumous proxy baptism. Radkey found that the name of Wiesel had been submitted to the database for the deceased, from which a separate process for proxy baptism could be initiated. Radkey also said that the names of Wiesel’s deceased father and maternal grandfather had been submitted to the site…

To which I can only say, Proxy baptism? Really? That doesn’t sound kosher to me, somehow.

Anyway, the Mormons are saying they didn’t really “baptize” Wiesel, even though his name pops up in their records. Nor did they intend to sorta, kinda baptize Simon Wiesenthal’s parents:

SALT LAKE CITY — Mormon church leaders apologized to the family of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal after his parents were posthumously baptized, a controversial ritual that Mormons believe allows deceased people a way to the afterlife but offends members of many other religions.

Wiesenthal died in 2005 after surviving the Nazi death camps and spending his life documenting Holocaust crimes and hunting down perpetrators who remained at large. Jews are particularly offended by an attempt to alter the religion of Holocaust victims, who were murdered because of their religion, and the baptism of Holocaust survivors was supposed to have been barred by a 1995 agreement…

The church immediately apologized, saying it was the actions of an individual member of church — whom they did not name — that led to the submission of Wiesenthal’s name…

Hey, it could happen to anybody, right? Right?

I don’t want to cast any aspersions, but this seems kind of… out there. I mean, we baptize babies who don’t know what’s going on, but dead people? Dead people who are not of your persuasion?

Taking a risk with a mustard seed

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I don’t often get releases like this one, so I thought I’d share it:

11 Trinity Youth Transform $1,100 into More Than $60,000

In Just 90 Days, through the Kingdom Assignment, Students Raise Money to Further the Kingdom of God

Thursday, February 9, 2012, Columbia, SC Trinity Cathedral’s Episcopal Youth Community (EYC) is making a big impact in their parish and in our community. In November of 2011, Canon Brian Silldorff challenged 11 members of EYC to participate in the Kingdom Assignment. The result? More than $60,000 to fund an array of projects, both sacred and secular.

The Kingdom Assignment is an international project dedicated to stewardship of God’s Kingdom that started some ten years ago in Lake City, California. You can read more about the Kingdom Assignment on their website, www.kingdomassignment.org.

After teaching a Sunday school lesson about the Parable of the Talents, Silldorff challenged eleven youth to participate in the Kingdom Assignment and entrusted them with $1,100 and offered just three rules: 1. The money belongs to God and is entrusted to you. 2. You have 90 days to further the kingdom of God with your talent and treasure. 3. You must report back in 90 days about your project and its success.

It’s now 90 days later and the Kingdom Assignment project will culminate during Youth Sunday School on Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 10:15am in the Workshop. Students, adults, and those impacted by the project will be present along with parishioners and the media to celebrate the impact and reach of more than $60,000.

You are invited to join in the celebration and share in the success. Please email Brian Silldorff if you plan to attend as space is the Workshop is limited. The Worskshop is located on the ground floor of the Trinity Center for Mission and Ministry located at 1123 Marion Street, Columbia, SC 29201.

Way to go, kids! I’m proud of you. Even though you’re not Roman. At least you’re catholic. You know, my cousin is one of y’all’s priests.

This reminds me of the best sermon I ever heard from my own pastor, Msgr. Lehocky. It was so long ago, he probably doesn’t remember it, but I do — the main points, anyway.

I’d always had trouble with that parable — you know, the Capitalist Parable:

14`The kingdom of heaven will be like the time a man went to a country far away. He called his servants and put them in charge of his money.

15He gave five bags of money to one servant. He gave two bags of money to another servant. He gave one bag of money to another servant. He gave to each one what he was able to be in charge of. Then he went away.

16`Right away the servant who had five bags of money began to buy and sell things with it. He made five bags of money more than he had at first.

17`The servant who had two bags of money did the same thing as the one who had five bags. He also made two bags of money more than he had at first.

18But the man who had only one bag of money dug a hole in the ground. And he hid his master’s money in the ground.

19`After a long time, the master of those servants came home. He asked what they had done with his money.

20The servant who had been given five bags of money brought five bags more to his master. He said, “Sir, you gave me five bags of money. See, I have made five bags more money.”

21`His master said, “You have done well. You are a good servant. I can trust you. You have taken good care of a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come, have a good time with your master.”

22`The servant who had been given two bags of money came and said to his master, “Sir, you gave me two bags of money. I have made two bags more money.”

23His master said, “You have done well. You are a good servant. I can trust you. You have taken good care of a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come, have a good time with your master.”

24`The servant who had been given one bag of money came and said, “Sir, I knew that you were a hard man. You cut grain where you did not plant. You pick fruit where you put nothing in.

25I was afraid. So I went and hid your money in the ground. Here is your money.”

26`His master answered him, “You are a bad and lazy servant. You knew that I cut grain where I did not plant. You knew that I pick fruit where I put nothing in.

27You should have put my money in the bank. Then when I came home, I would have had my money with interest on it.

28So take the money away from him. Give it to the one who has ten bags.

29Anyone who has some will get more, and he will have plenty. But he who does not get anything, even the little that he has will be taken away from him.

30Take this good-for-nothing servant! Put him out in the dark place outside. People there will cry and make a noise with their teeth.” ‘

Not that I have anything against capitalism; I don’t. I just didn’t like it that Jesus was suggesting that the third servant had done something wrong. I mean, if someone else asks you to hold his property, shouldn’t you take every precaution to preserve it and have it ready to give back to him? Doesn’t basic honesty require that? Capitalism is a fine thing, with your own money. But do you have the right to take a risk with someone else’s, without specific (preferably written) authorization?

The risk part was what got me; that’s what seemed wrong. It was too easy to fail.

Father Lehocky urged us to look at it in a whole new way. He said people who play it safe are wasting the talents or other gifts they are entrusted with. OK, I sort of got that, but what if they fail? What if they do?, he said. Failing is part of life. You can fail big-time, and by doing so advance the cause of God. Look at Jesus himself. Was there ever a bigger failure? Look at the way he died. Charged as a criminal, whipped nearly to death, stripped naked and nailed up on a gibbet like an animal for the unfeeling community to watch his death-agonies. Abandoned by his friends, who ran like scalded dogs before the bully boys and denied even knowing him. Not a word he’d said had ever even been written down. All over, all done with, all for nothing. He’d taken a risk, and failed spectacularly, by every standard the world had for judging such things.

Except that he hadn’t, as it turned out. He’d really started something. The risk he’d taken had paid off in a way no ordinary mortal would have predicted.

That sermon made me think differently about my life and how it should be lived. It made me look at failure in a new way. Not that I’ve always lived up to that new way of looking at life. But it made me think. And now that I’m writing this, I’m thinking about it again…

The ELITES are the ones who should be sorry! (And the crowd roars…)

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E. J. Dionne sent me a note this morning (yep, I’m name-dropping; I value his friendship) in which he shared a link to his post-SC column, which you can read here. I was particularly struck by this passage:

Then came the rebuke to CNN’s John King, who asked about the claim from Gingrich’s second wife that her former husband had requested an “open marriage.” By exploding at King and the contemporary journalism, Gingrich turned a dangerous allegation into a rallying point. Past sexual conduct mattered far less to conservatives than a chance to admonish the supposedly liberal media. Gingrich won evangelicals by 2-1, suggesting, perhaps, a rather elastic definition of “family values” — or a touching faith in Gingrich’s repentance.

E.J. was very generous to admit even the possibility that the evangelicals’ choice reflected their simple belief that Newt is repentant.

I saw how the forgiven man behaved when reminded of his sin. And if there is anything we all know about Newt Gingrich, it is that he does not walk, talk or comport himself like a penitent. Sure, he’s new to being Catholic, but he forcefully projects the image of a man who is “hardly sorry” rather than “heartily.”

And that is what seems to appeal to his supporters. That he’s not sorry. For anything. That rather than donning sackcloth and ashes, he stands up, throws out his chest and demands that those people out there, those elites, and those worthless shufflers who want to live off his tax money, be sorry instead.

And the crowd roars, more like 1st century pagans in the Colosseum than like Christians.

No, I’m in no position to judge. I am certainly not Newt’s confessor, and I have no idea what’s in his heart. Nor do I know what’s in those hearts in the crowd. But I know how he chooses to act outwardly. And I know how the crowd reacts — outwardly.

And that’s probably all I can know. So I share it.

Basically, I think the evangelicals who voted for him didn’t have their evangelical hats on at the moment. People are complex, and have layers. And just because an individual answers to one sort of identification doesn’t mean he is expressing that in everything he does.

So E.J. made me think today. And he made me nod in the paragraph before that one:

There was also the matter of race. Gingrich is no racist, but neither is he naive about the meaning of words. When Fox News’ Juan Williams, an African-American journalist, directly challenged Gingrich about the racial overtones of Gingrich’s staple reference to Obama as “the food-stamp president,” the former House speaker verbally pummeled him, to raucous cheers. As if to remind everyone of the power of coded language, a supporter later praised Gingrich for putting Williams “in his place.”

Yep, that’s what was happening.

With a Mormon and a Catholic leading the pack, let’s pause for a few words from John F. Kennedy

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On the morning after the photo-finish in Iowa, The New Yorker is waxing deeply philosophical:

What will be more telling, perhaps, is how the Republican candidates, in the primaries and caucuses to come, address the ideals and most personal beliefs of others. A party whose base has increasingly been oriented around the interests of politicized evangelism finds itself with a tie between a Mormon and a Catholic. (The “entrance polls” in Iowa, like many others so far, showed one set of numbers for those identifying themselves as “evangelical or born again,” and one set for those who do not.) One has been left to wonder how much of a factor Romney’s religion has been in his troubles with Republican voters. (They have so many non-sectarian reasons to suspect him that it’s hard to tease out.) In the 2008 election, as Hendrik Hertzberg noted at the time, Romney attempted to ingratiate himself by drawing a circle around the followers of organized religions generally, while casting aspersions on those who led a secular life. Santorum, meanwhile, has made religious beliefs about matters such as family planning and romantic relationships cornerstones of his political program.

We are more than a half century removed from John F. Kennedy’s campaign to be the first Catholic President. In a speech that he felt he needed to give, at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, he said,

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist.

Watching his speech on the subject now, one is struck not only by his words but by the expressions on the faces of the people who are listening—really listening, it appears, to words thoughtfully spoken…

This has not been the spirit of the speakers or the audience in the dozen or so debates so far. What will we see in the six scheduled for January alone, not to mention the ads that will air in the weeks and months ahead? What will the candidates, and their surrogates, have to say about each others’ religions? Or about people who have no religion at all, and—one hopes this won’t need to be said—are no less faithful citizens for it? (Kennedy, in a crucial phrase, spoke of the right to attend “or not attend” the church of one’s choice.)…

Got a nice note from E.J. Dionne this morning

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I appreciated E.J. taking the time to point something out to me...

So we’re entering the stage at which national media are about to start paying attention to what is said in South Carolina. So it is that I got a note from E.J. Dionne this morning. After praising this “poetic” passage in my blog earlier: “What fools the calendar doth make of us, even when we know better.”

… he went on to say,

OK, but still, does it have any impact? Huck wouldn’t have come within 3 points of McCain without Iowa — and Fred Thompson probably made the difference.
But you are right about our being fools. Original sin and all that.
Warmest EJ

He’s got a point. Especially about the Original Sin thing. But then, E.J.’s a smart guy. And a Catholic.

Yes, if Santorum wins Iowa, this is fertile territory for him. Being a values guy and all.

As for Iowa… My dismissive statements may be based in what I wish were true. As in, “Iowa shouldn’t matter, so I’ll say it doesn’t.” I wrote a column urging everyone to ignore Iowa four years ago. Then, when Obama won there, I started hoping it DID mean something — only to see him get body-slammed in N.H.

As I’ve mentioned here before, my baptism in national politics came when I covered Howard Baker in Iowa in 1980, for my Tennessee newspaper. Since I was covering it, Iowa took on  disproportionate importance in my mind. When Reagan lost there, I was eager to pronounce his candidacy over. We know how that turned out. My prejudice also arises from the fact that, as a voter, I am barred from participating in a caucus. I’d have the same problem, of course, in a primary state with party registration. Fortunately, we don’t have that here in SC, and our primaries are open.

There’s still time left to get your greens ground

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We didn’t wait for the liturgically correct date, but went ahead and got rid of our Christmas tree on the 8th day, because we had the time for the chore then.

And at least we did the environmentally correct thing and took it to Saxe Gotha Presbyterian Church, which is one of the locations in the Midlands for the Grinding of the Greens project.

You can still drop off your tree, wreaths and what have you by Jan. 13, after which:

Free mulch from the recycled Christmas trees will be available to the public on Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012 at Seven Oaks Park and the Clemson Institute for Economic & Community Development from 9 a.m. until the mulch runs out.

Which is cool, I think.

That's mine on the left, with the hole in the base. Goodbye, tree...

Let nothing you dismay

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My Memphis cartoonist friend William Day shared this with me last week, and it seemed like a good thing to share with y’all today.

Here’s the Scripture reference:

6The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

7And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.

Requiescat in pace, Christopher Hitchens — if you’ll forgive the seeming contradiction

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I’m sad to see that Christopher Hitchens is no longer among us. On a trivial level, I’m sorry because reading him was such a guilty pleasure, as he sliced and diced viewpoints — and people — with whom he disagreed.

On a deeper level, I have the traditional regret, as a Catholic, for the loss of an unshriven soul. Not that I wanted to see Hitchens make a deathbed conversion. That would have seemed cheap theatrics, and it would have sent the wrong message — that our relationship with God should be based on existential terror. I just wish he’d changed his mind at some point, before now.

It was always impressive to see the way his mind worked, fairly crackling through any subject you may like, and totally unapologetic for opinions that were unpopular. And I don’t just say that because he agreed with me on Iraq, which probably distressed a lot of his free-thinking friends.

But I mourn the fact that his incisive, energetic mind always came up with the wrong answer when it ran the God equation. He would have been a good one to have on the other side. You know, the side of the angels, as they say.

As a believer, then, it falls to me to say, May God have mercy upon his soul. And I mean it. I wish him the best in the life he did not expect.

In the spirit of the season, a little Hanukkah music

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In an earlier comment, Phillip Bush posted a link to a rabbi’s spoof of the Perry ad that got me so outraged yesterday. It was… OK. I give it points for quick turnaround, but as comedy goes, it was lacking.

Kathryn responded with a link to an old Stephen Colbert/Jon Stewart skit, which I said wasn’t nearly as good as SNL’s classic “Hanukkah Harry” bit.

And now, continuing the meme, Stan Dubinsky brings to my attention the latest Hanukkah video by the Maccabeats. It’s a cover of a Matisyahu number. (Watch to the end — Barack Obama makes an appearance! No sign of Rick Perry, though…)

You may or may not remember the Maccabeats  for their breakout hit, “Candlelight.” Also about Hanukkah. And also very light-hearted.

The Maccabeats — yet another a cappella hip-hop bubble-gum Yeshiva group. When is the recording industry going to come up with something original, I ask you?

On a president asking God to bless America

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Sooner or later, we’ll turn to more profane matters, but to follow up on a question from Bud:

Does anyone besides me find it offputting when the POTUS says “God Bless America”? Who started this practice? I never noticed it before George W. used it at every opportunity. Now Obama is getting carried away with it.

My first reaction was that every president in my memory had done it. But I thought I’d check, however cursorily. My quick search turned up this piece from TIME magazine. Apparently, no president from FDR through LBJ had ended speeches that way. But then…

On the evening of April 30, 1973, Richard Nixon addressed the nation live from the Oval Office in an attempt to manage the growing Watergate scandal. It was a difficult speech for Nixon: He announced the resignations of three Administration officials, including Attorney General Richard Kleindienst — but Nixon nonetheless tried to sound optimistic. As he approached the end of his speech, Nixon noted that he had “exactly 1,361 days remaining” in his term and wanted them “to be the best days in America’s history.” “Tonight,” he continued, “I ask for your prayers to help me in everything that I do throughout the days of my presidency.” Then came the magic words: “God bless America and God bless each and every one of you.”

Not an auspicious beginning, give the extent to which Nixon was given to self-pitying self-interest.

According to this source, neither Gerald Ford nor Jimmy Carter (surprised?) used the phrase to end speeches. But Ronald Reagan did, big-time. And every president since.

Of course, this account is rather nitpicking. Presidents before Nixon DID invoke the Deity’s blessing, just in different words:

Presidents from Roosevelt to Carter did sometimes conclude their addresses by seeking God’s blessing, often using language such as “May God give us wisdom” or “With God’s help.” But they didn’t make a habit of it.

As for whether presidents should do this or not (and Bud thinks not), I think it’s fine either way.  As I said in response to Bud earlier, I generally like it. No matter how pompous the speaker, those words end the speech on a note of humility. It’s a nod to that which is greater than the speaker and all the power he commands.

It is an invocation. OK, technically, since it’s at the end, it’s a benediction. But basically, it’s a plea sent aloft — Please bless this nation which I have been elected to serve. It’s impossible to imagine anything more benign, or more appropriate, for an elected leader to say.

AT THE SAME TIME…

I respect that some presidents have generally avoided such an invocation. Declining to do so is another way of demonstrating humility, and proper respect toward a deity. A serious, thoughtful politician might well consider it crass to invoke God in connection with a political speech, as the rest of the speech is necessarily tied to petty temporal concerns and usually designed to advance the position of the speaker.

I excuse the practice to the extent that it is a sort of departure from the rest of the speech. I tend to hear it as the speaker saying, “Whether you go along with what I said just now or not, whether I continue to serve you or not, whether I and my party prevail or be consigned to the dustbin of history, I ask that God bless our country.”

It at least gives me one thing I can always agree with.

A little wiseacre reflects on the nature of Hades

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Bart shared this, which I gather is one of those things going around on the Internet:

HELL EXPLAINED
BY A CHEMISTRY STUDENT
The following is an actual question given on a University of Arizona chemistry midterm, and an actual answer turned in by a student.
The answer by one student was so ‘profound’ that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well :
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.
One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving, which is unlikely… I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave.
Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today.
Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, ‘It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,’ and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen
over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct….. …leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting ‘Oh my God.’
THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

I confess that it made me smile, in spite of the blasphemy. But then I feel bad for smiling a humor that derives its force from mocking, however gently, all religion. If you think about it, this is just the sort of thing that one of Satan’s lesser devils may have written, were he a chemistry student. If he were feeling particularly cocky after having gotten lucky with Teresa.

Oh, and the answer was not “profound.” Being a little wiseacre is not profound.

He’s not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays

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Just to cleanse the spiritual palate, brethren, I invoke Brother Tull to share with us a musical interlude.

This song has been running through my head a good bit lately. (Seeing “all the bishops” — or at least, all the Anglican clergy — lined up and harmonizing at Jason’s ordination the other day was but one instance in which it has come to mind.) You may find that interesting, in connection with my outrage at the tawdry way Rick Perry is trying to wind God up and make him toddle across the room, beating a toy drum that says “Perry for President.”

Perry’s message, considered most charitably, is after all that God has a place in the public square. He’s not supposed to be kept in a steepled ghetto. God is for every day, not an hour on Sunday.

I agree with that with all my heart and soul. God, properly considered, is for every day, every moment. (For that matter, it’s not for us to say what God’s for; it’s up to us to figure out what WE’RE intended for.) That’s one reason I like this song.

But I would submit that that includes the moments in which you try to exploit God to your own ends. You don’t wind him up then, either. Rather, you endeavor to alter yourself to fit His expectations.

This is a tough thing to talk about because we’re not supposed to judge, either — are we? So people get away with some really horrific stuff, because who are we to say? If another man testifies that this is how he experiences God, who are we to condemn?

And so people get away with all sorts of stuff, and if we protest, we are painted as being one of those who wants to keep God in a box.

And there are such people. Good, well-meaning people, quite often — although they are confused. They confuse the First Amendment with Jefferson’s views (when he wasn’t involved with it), and then go the further step of assuming that a ban on establishment of religion by Congress implies that we individual citizens (and that includes officeholders) are not supposed to talk about religion in the public sphere.

They are wrong. And their wrongness is all the more wrong because they create a space in which someone like Perry can construct a lie about a “war on religion.” And everything just gets worse. They are wrong, and he is wrong, and I suppose I’m wrong, too, for judging both.

But I feel better when I listen to the music. Don’t think you have to turn up your speakers when it starts out so soft. It builds.

The nuclear escalation of Rick Perry’s unholy war

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Wow. I inadvertently backed into that last post.

I had looked at  the CNN report (the text, anyway), and the Perry “holiday greeting” from last year that made it look hypocritical. But I had failed to look at the ad that prompted the CNN report to begin with.

I thought I had seen Rick Perry take riding God like a hobby horse about as far as he could, in the ad I showed you last week.

But if that was Perry trying to be a holy warrior, in the latest ad, that war goes nuclear.

There is no way that I could ever support for president a man who tries so nakedly to bend God to his own ends. And that is a hard thing to explain to the sort of people Perry is trying to appeal to. And that just divides our country more and more (and leaves me feeling more and more alienated, since I can neither identify with secularists nor those who could actually believe the POTUS is engaged in a “war on religion”). And it’s so unnecessary.

How can a man think it’s SO important for him to be elected that he would do this? This is stomach-turning stuff.

And so this is Advent, and what have we done?

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And so that time has rolled around again, a time when some of our avowedly “conservative” brethren start griping that no one will let them say “Merry Christmas.”

This has always struck me as one of the non-ier nonissues of the world, not least because it always comes up during Advent, not during Christmas, so why do they want to say “Merry Christmas” anyway, and doesn’t “Happy Holidays” cover it… but I’m not writing this to get all liturgical on you.

Anyway, Rick Perry, who seems to have decided that an evangelical offense is his best chance to get back into the game in Iowa, is now taking a big stand for Christmas. And he’s doing it with such apocryphal assertions as this, on CNN’s Situation Room:

What we’re seeing from the left, of which I would suggest to you, President Obama is a member of the left and substantial left-of-center beliefs, that you can’t even have a Christmas party. You can’t say a prayer at school.

Say what?, you’re thinking. But he’s counting on people who are not thinking to be impressed.

And I hate to put it that way, because I sound like one of those very godless secularists Perry’s trying to demonize. There are indeed people who see people of faith as simple fools.

But that means they see ME as a simple fool, so I’m not one of them.

By saying he’s trying to appeal to people who are not thinking, I’m saying that Perry himself is the one insulting the intelligence of people of faith. Particularly when those people can look back at Gov. Perry’s own official “holiday” greeting of last Dec. 22:

Gov. Perry: Keep Veterans, First Responders in Your Thoughts and Prayers this Holiday Season

Wednesday, December 22, 2010  •  Austin, Texas  •  Press Release

The holidays are a special time of year to pause and take stock of the many blessings we enjoy, not just as human beings, but as Americans and Texans. Of all those blessings, I’d offer that the most precious is our freedom.

There are thousands of Texans serving the cause of freedom all over the world, in dangerous places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Driven by a dedication to our country and communities, they’ll spend the holidays thousands of miles from parents, friends, spouses and children.

I encourage you to keep our fighting men and women in your thoughts and prayers, along with their families who anxiously await their return. At the same time, I hope you’ll remember the folks who keep our neighborhoods safe: our state’s first responders.

While we enjoy the comforts of home with loved ones, these brave men and women are on the job, providing care in the back of an ambulance, preparing to respond to a fire call or patrolling our international border.
We should never take them for granted and we should definitely keep them in our prayers as they sacrifice for our safety.

So, during this holiday season, remember to thank a first responder or salute a veteran for their service and pray for God’s protection on them and their families.

May God bless you and, through you, may He continue to bless the Great State of Texas.

Did you see any Jesus in that greeting? Neither did I. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s fine. It’s just that you wouldn’t know that to hear Perry now.

Mainly what Perry has done is amuse the godless secularists mightily with his hypocrisy, which is why this inconsistency is flying around the Internet, which is why I knew about it to share it with you.

Nothing like a quiet, holy, contemplative Advent, huh?

Cousin Jason becomes Father Jason

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Bishop Mark Lawrence leads the congregation in applauding the new priest. Jason may be wary of pride, but that's all right -- we'll be proud for him.

Normally, I wouldn’t share something this personal, except it made news.

I spent Saturday driving with my mother and her older brother to Conway and back, where her younger brother’s son, Jason Collins, was being ordained as an Episcopal priest.

Here’s where I could say all sorts of things about this not being the same as a real priest, because real priests don’t have a wife and children and Jason does, but let’s not get all technical. I’m proud and happy for him, and pleased to call him “Father” even though he wasn’t born until I was almost 18.

The reason I post about it here is that it was news in those parts. In fact, it made the front page of The Sun News, on account of Jason’s prominence in the community:

CONWAY — Jason Collins wasn’t sure he wanted to be interviewed for this story.

He didn’t want readers to think it was his prideful narrative of a journey from the secular world to the faith-based world. He was afraid people would think he was boasting, that he was telling a story of how remarkable he is for having done what he’s done.

But the story is his journey, as Collins knows well. And he hopes readers will finish it with the knowledge that everyone’s life can be transformed through God and Jesus Christ.

Collins, a former Conway city planner, is being ordained today into the Sacred Order of Priests at a 3 p.m. ceremony at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Conway…

It was a wonderful ceremony, very moving. The bishop was there (of course; else there’d be no ordination) as well as a whole mess of priests, friends and relations. Jason’s wife and two children were involved integrally involved in the proceedings, and all of us felt privileged to be there. Even though I was tempted, as a Roman, to erupt in a loud “ahem!” when the bishop charged him with words attributed to St. Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons.”

But Jason is now officially a priest in the one holy catholic and apostolic church, and none may say nay to that. Not around me, anyway.

But verily, yon Richard be a godly man, withal…

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No sooner had I posted the earlier Perry video than this one came in, and it truly boggles the mind in its simplicity. In case you have trouble watching it, here’s the script:

Gov. Perry: “When you run for president, you get a bunch of questions about your faith.”


Text: Rick Perry


“People want to know what drives you, how you make decisions.”


“Now some liberals say that faith is a sign of weakness. Well they’re wrong. I think we all need God’s help.”


“America’s greatest leaders have been people of strong faith, strong values. That makes for a strong America.”


“I’m Rick Perry, I’m not ashamed to talk about my faith, and I approve this message.”

Really? That’s it? You spend who knows how many thousands of dollars producing this and getting it aired, you have this golden opportunity to address the entire nation on the subject of God, the universe and everything, the ultimate questions, and that’s what you say? I’m one a them good folks whut believes in the Lord, and not one a them heathen lib’ruls.

That’s it?!?!?

And this is supposed to work for you?

Tell you what, Rick. Go read Matthew 6:5. In fact, read the whole chapter. Run along, now, there’s a good lad…

Thanks, E.J., for giving us a piece of your mind

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Before another day passes, I want to express my appreciation to E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post Writers Group and the Brookings Institution, for delivering the 2011 Cardinal Bernardin lecture at USC last night.

Perhaps because he’s from my world, he spoke to me as no previous speaker has in the 12 years of the series — of faith and public life, particularly in the sense of how the Cardinal’s life and work relate to our existence today. So I thank him for that. I also thank all those who contributed to bringing about this event — the Department of Religious Studies, the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, President Harris Pastides’ Civil Discourse Initiative, and Samuel Tenenbaum and the Tenenbaum Lectureship Fund.

For those of you who don’t know, Joseph Bernardin was a son of Italian immigrants who grew up here in Columbia, as a parishioner at my church, St. Peter’s. He would become the leading light of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the force behind such remarkable documents as “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response.” He fostered the Church’s Common Ground Initiative, and his greatest legacy (to me) is placing the Church’s pro-life ethic within the compelling — and necessary — framework of the Seamless Garment — a legacy that, inexplicably to me, remains controversial, even anathema, among some. After becoming Archbishop of Chicago, he was widely regarded as a likely first American pope before his death of cancer in 1996 at the age of 68.

E.J. is that rare bird in the higher reaches of journalism who writes regularly of matters that bear upon ultimate questions (see, for instance, “The Vatican meets the Wall Street occupiers” from last week), and does so with an intellectual vigor that not only reflects credit upon his and my faith tradition, but shows what journalism is still capable of achieving at this late date. He knew the cardinal, and has long admired him.

Here’s a rough draft of his remarks. There are typos, and it is incomplete (entire anecdotes are missing), but it gives you an idea of what he had to say. An excerpt:

I want to close with something I have been pondering ever since the Spriritan fathers of Duquesne University asked me to give a talk about immigration. I was struck when I was preparing the talk how much both the Old and New Testament had to say about our obligations to strangers. Not to brothers or sisters or neighbors, but the strangers. And it made me think that perhaps our calling is really to create a world without strangers. Yes, that’s utopian and impractical and all sorts of other things. But it is a useful objective to ponder, a useful goal to keep in front of us. It is a world in which there is no “other,” no “them” or “those people,” just fellow citizens or fellow children of God or fellow human beings. It is a world in which we share each other’s joys and sorrows, each other’s benefits and burdens. It is a world in which the fortunate realize that their affluence depends not just on their own hard work and skill, but also on luck and providence. Often, simply, the good fortune of having been born in a particular place, to a particular family. We all owe so much of who we are to our parents and what they did for us. And not a single one of us can claim to have been wise or farsighted in our choice of parents. That truly was God’s choice, or for those who don’t believe, fate’s. And the same applies to the country in which we are born. We cannot praise ourselves for being really smart to have been born in the United States of America. A world without strangers would be a better world because all of us, everywhere, would feel at home all the time. In a world without strangers, we approach the new people we meet, anticipating the joys of friendship, not the anxieties of enmity. And yes, a world without strangers would be a world more likely to heed the injunction of the prophet Isaiah, to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free. It would be a world more likely to resemble the place imagined by the prophet Amos, who, as Dr. King taught us in his “I Have a Dream” speech, imagined that justice would roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. I believe that Cardinal Bernardin spent his life trying to create a world without strangers. His mission to honor the dignity of every person was not just political but also personal. He provided us a model.  So let us live by his words: “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”

OK, that’s heavy, I know. Hey, it was the ending. Perhaps I can show you better the spirit of the way E.J. speaks with this ice-breaker from the beginning:

Whenever someone gives me an introduction that is far too generous, I like to note what it’s like to give talks about politics and be introduced with the words: “And now, for the latest dope from Washington, here’s E. J. Dionne.”

That’s E.J. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, but he approaches the most important issues with all the respect and reverence they deserve and demand.

I hope Kathryn Fenner and “Abba,” who were both there, will weigh in with their thoughts about the lecture. I had the impression that they found it meaningful as well.