Reading Rat May 2011

On authors in my recommended reading.

Bubble double, double and trouble

"The buyers think what they're buying will appreciate in value, making them rich in the future. The product grows more and more elaborate, and more and more expensive, but the expense is offset by cheap credit provided by sellers eager to encourage buyers to buy.

"Buyers see that everyone else is taking on mounds of debt, and so are more comfortable when they do so themselves; besides, for a generation, the value of what they're buying has gone up steadily. What could go wrong? Everything continues smoothly until, at some point, it doesn't." --Glenn Reynolds (via KausFiles)

Bipartisanship passing in the night

"And that is what establishment spokespeople like [David] Brooks always mean when they yearn for 'bipartisanship': wise old men getting together in secret and reaching agreements that exclude democratic debate and render irrelevant genuine differences among the citizenry." --Glenn Greenwald (via Althouse)

Reading a Signe of the times

(click here to view)

Signe Wilkinson Philadelphia Daily News May 23, 2011 EditorialCartoonists.com

(via JSOnline)

Coming up: Hot Air in Dallas Charter Blamed on Rising CO₂ Levels.

P.S. Tony Auth on the latest John Jay study. (via SNAP Network)

Archbishop rent his garments?

Turns out our Archbankrupt Archdiocese of Milwaukee never actually owned its headquarters facility, the Cousins Center, today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. "Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki and his predecessor Archbishop Timothy Dolan ... concedes there may have been 'imprecise communications' about the Cousins Center." As I recall, he used to be our Archdiocese's Director of (Imprecise?) Communications.

He goes on, "'But that doesn't change the facts as they are ... that De Sales Preparatory Seminary Inc. owns the Cousins Center, that the archdiocese rents it from the seminary and that they're two separate entities,' he said." The point, though, isn't the facts as they are, but whether Archdiocesan creditors, or potential donors for that matter, can rely on its representations of the facts.

In this April 13, 2011 Thought for the Week Archbishop Listecki discussed our Archdiocese's opposition to the abuse creditors' motion in Bankruptcy Court for an order that forensic accountants examine its books.

"It is important for you to know that clear, factual financial information is now (and has been) readily available in financial reports on the archdiocesan website. I also want to assure you that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has been forthright in sharing complete financial information with the attorneys for victims/survivors – prior to the Chapter 11 proceeding (in the mediation process) and currently in the Chapter 11 proceeding through the required court reporting."

So does "(and has been)" imprecisely communicate "(and has been since 2004)", when the financial statements began showing the Minor Seminary corporation as owner of the Cousins Center?

He later says, "In the meantime, I want to assist you and your parishioners in understanding the facts and details involved beyond the headlines and sound bites you may hear or read in the media." What's his gripe about headlines and soundbites? Surely it can't be that they are imprecise communications. "Complete financial information is available on the homepage of the archdiocese’s website... ." Wasn't it always impliedly represented as complete? Now we find it out wasn't. If it wasn't, why shouldn't we wonder whether or not it is complete now?

Calls to my mind the November 2002 USCCB meeting, after which The New York Times reported Bishops Fail to Heed Calls for an Audit. There was a local angle.

"The lack of a hearing on a proposed audit at the bishops' semiannual meeting angered lay leaders who have called for increased financial accountability, and it especially stung Erica John, an heiress to the Miller brewing fortune, whose donations were used secretly to pay $450,000 to a man who accused the Milwaukee archbishop of sexual assault."

"'We are the church, and the leaders to whom we entrust our religious patrimony are failing us,' Ms. John said today in an interview. 'We as funders think it's important that the bishops open their books and come clean, because some of us are beginning to feel disappointed and even alienated from the church.'"

If that matters.

Ordaining women as retired priests

Voice Of The Faithful has provided a $10,000 grant to Ruth Kolpack to make a documentary film of her 2009 firing as a pastoral associate from a Catholic parish in the Diocese of Madison, today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison dismissed her, it appears, after being convinced of the truth of allegations "that she, among other things, encouraged non-Catholics to take communion in Catholic churches, believes in women's ordination and believes she can consecrate the Eucharist... ."

Ms. Kolpack, the article says, is now 66 years old. When VOTF had a local chapter, I sometimes dropped in. The audience demographics struck me; it was hard to pick out anyone in attendance who looked like they were born after the death of Pope Pius XII. That's also often the case when I see reports of purported women's ordinations. Isn't a claim by a group to be the wave of the future weakened by its having a membership who won't be around when it arrives?

Here's VOTF's press release.

Death before evangelization

The "aging and dwindling congregation" of Blessed Trinity Church on Milwaukee's north side will soon merge with St. Catherine's, today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Apparently not recognizing that "aging and dwindling" means dying off, "members hope to remain a presence in their current community".

Our Archdiocese is assuming this death spiral will continue. "Over time, it is projected there will be about 85 parishes or clusters in the 10-county archdiocese, said Mark Kemmeter, director for planning and councils... ." How, you might wonder, can that "85 parishes" be reconciled with the Faith In Our Future capital campaign's Mission Statement including "To strengthen parish ministries in education and faith formation" in "Our 211 parishes"; perhaps it all depends on what the meaning of "parish" is.

Mr, Kemmeter later said "I think the people of Blessed Trinity have it right," he said. "They understand what church is about." About to close, in their case.

It calls to mind what what "Father Eleazar Perez, the popular Mexican priest who transformed a dying Polish parish on the south side into the largest Latino parish in the archdiocese", said to explain his departure. "[T]he system is choking... ."

So a dying parish is a model and a thriving one a problem? Well, recall that some years back, Fr. Bryan Massingale gave an address to the Spring Assembly of Priests in which he said "...I want to offer an image that speaks to me of hopeful endings and new beginnings: the image of hospice. I want to suggest that prophetic ministry today requires a 'hospice' mind set and approach to priestly ministry. ..." Seems he was not only taken seriously, but literally and to heart, and applied bureaucratically.

Iowahawk up

"... today I stand proudly with my new friends of the formerly antiwar left in a mindlessly jingoistic salute to President Obama for an extralegal military assassination well done." --David Burge