Too much of a good thing: Christmas

Bill McKibben has a fantastic essay posted at grist on the materialistic yuletide nightmare in which many of us find ourselves this time of year. Timely observations on a year-round problem. An excerpt:

The problem with Christmas is not the batteries. The problem isn't even really the stuff. The problem with Christmas is that no one much likes it anymore.

If you poll Americans this time of year, far more of them regard the approaching holidays with dread than anticipation. It has long since become too busy, too expensive, too centered around acquiring that which we do not need. In fact, it's the perfect crystallization of the American economy -- the American consumer experience squeezed into a manic week, a week that people find themselves hoping will soon end so that on Jan. 2 they can return to the mere routine hecticity of their lives.

Duh

A couple of weeks ago, the folks in the apartment above us had some bathroom issues. A pipe-problem of some kind was resulting in water cascading down through the wall and into the bathroom below ours (it's a mystery why the water skipped our bathroom--all three bathrooms are "stacked"). A plumber was summoned, who commenced to tearing into the floor of the upstairs bathroom and dismantling the offending pipes. While the original problem caused us no apparent harm, the effort to repair it did. Water drip-dripped from the ceiling right onto the seat of our toilet.

I had performed a thorough cleaning of the bathroom not a week prior and was, understandably, deeply distressed. The water came faster and faster and the mess spread. The building manager wasn't home and I didn't have her number, but I remembered that the management company had a sign on the outside of the building advertising an apartment for rent. So I strode indignantly out the front door, down the steps, and punched the numbers--indignantly--into my phone. I got a recording. The recording, however, did have the cell number for our on site manager, so I gave her a call and, having gotten through to someone--finally!--I vented my frustration. She promised to call the plumber in question and let him know what was going on. I promised to be offended and put-upon that my nice clean bathroom was at that moment being flooded with water and god-knows-what.

It was in one of my many pacings-by the bathroom that a solution--not to the dripping, but to the flooding--hit me. I could lift the lid to the toilet and let the water, etc., drip into the toilet instead of on it and the floor. Simple, yes, and I was surprised that I, being usually fairly adept at solving such problems, had overlooked such an obvious solution.

As I stood there looking at the soggy bathroom, it occurred to me that it was my haste to find an object for my wrath, an individual on which to pin the blame for the injustice of a sullied bathroom, and, on some level, a need to make the violation as dramatic as possible that led me to miss the opportunity to minimize the damage done. It would cheapen the moral of the story to pontificate here on the broader implications of this little revelation, so I'll refrain, and leave that to you, gentle reader. Assuming, of course, that anyone reads this.

Pat Boone tells it like it is

Over at worldnetdaily Pat Boone (yes, THAT Pat Boone) serves up a health dose of conservative whupass on the liberal media for their virtual coronation of Hillary Clinton as the next President and what he believes is a concerted effort to ignore the Republican contenders. The actual commentary needs to be read to be believed. Well, not so much believed as marveled at.


Perhaps, in fact, the reason that more people are capable of naming a Democrat than a Republican in the race for president has nothing to do with the much-ballyhooed "liberal bias" of the media and everything to do with the public's quite astute observation that the top-tier Republican candidates are almost as ignorant as certain neocon, has-been, aging pop stars shilling for them.

And whom does Boone (my, wouldn't great-granddaddy be proud!) hold up as paragons of journalistic integrity? Why, "Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Reagan, Ann Coulter, and Laura Ingraham and a host of other articulate and informed talk-show hosts...", of course! And just what is it that they they're doing to warn the ignorant, liberal-media-brainwashed masses of the danger to all that is good and godly? They're calling Hillary "Bill Clinton in a pantsuit", confusing "Obama with Osama", and marveling that "that little kid Johnny Edwards is trying to be president of the United States!"

Boone confuses a childlike penchant for discernment with childish commentary and applauds the conservative punditry for the latter. Perhaps he should stick to singing. Wait, on second thought...

In case you don't know who Pat Boone is/was, here's a picture from the 1995 Grammy awards




Yes, this man is lecturing the American public on propriety and political discourse.

Just because...

Bobbie Gentry sings "Ode to Billy Joe" on the Smothers Brothers Hour. One of the greatest ballads ever recorded and a stellar, haunting performance.

ENDA Passes House, 235-184

A must see/read from Barney Frank, via AmericaBlog . Particularly interesting is his acknowledgment that, due to his social status, he is not as vulnerable to discrimination as many in the LGBT community, but that he nonetheless must use his position to further the cause of equality.

An excerpt, then the video:

Rep. Frank: “I want to address the motion to delay. Mr. Speaker, we say here that we don't take things personally, and usually that’s true. Members, Mr. Speaker, will have to forgive me — I take it personally. 35 years ago, I filed a bill that tried to get rid of discrimination based on sexual orientation. As we sit here today, there are millions of Americans in states where this is not the law. By the way, 19 states have such a law. In no case has it led to that decision. The Massachusetts law passed in 1989, that did not lead to the decision in 2004, unrelated. But here’s the deal: I used to be someone subject to this prejudice. And through luck, circumstance, I got to be a big shot. I’m now above that prejudice. But I feel an obligation, to 15-year-olds dreading to go to school because of the torments, to people they’ll lose their job in a gas station if someone finds out who they love. I feel an obligation to use the status I have been lucky enough to get, to help them. And I want to ask my colleagues here, Mr. Speaker, on a personal basis, please don’t fall for this sham. Don’t send me out of here having failed to help those people.”

"It's a typically hierarchical form of intimidation, and we will not be intimidated"

Two St. Louis face excommunication for planned Womenpriests ordination ceremony next Sunday.



Archbishop Burke warns against women's ordination

By CHERYL WITTENAUER
Associated Press Writer
Advertisement

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke has warned two Roman Catholic women that they will be excommunicated if they proceed with a planned ordination Sunday.

The two women - Rose Marie Dunn Hudson of Festus and Elsie Hainz McGrath of St. Louis - are set to be ordained as part of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement that began in 2002.

Only men are ordained priests and deacons in the Catholic Church. The Womenpriests and the advocacy group, the Women's Ordination Conference, are among Catholics pressing to change that tradition.

Both women said they will ignore Burke's warning.

"It's a typically hierarchical form of intimidation, and we will not be intimidated," McGrath said.

In letters delivered by courier to the women's homes Monday evening, Burke warned the women they would be committing a "grave error" and "act of schism" by trying to receive priestly ordination.

He reminded them that the pope has stated infallibly that only men can receive a valid ordination.

"Should you refuse to comply ... in order to protect the faithful from grave spiritual deception ... you will incur automatically ... the censure of excommunication," wrote Burke, who is also a church lawyer.

He said "additional disciplinary measures will also have to be imposed."

The archdiocese declined to comment about the letters.

"What is he going to do, burn us at the stake or what?" Hudson asked. "We're going to just totally ignore it. This is not unexpected. We wondered why it took so long."

Both women have graduate degrees in theology or pastoral studies and have been active in ministry for years.

McGrath, 69, is the widow of a Roman Catholic deacon. She has worked for the archdiocese, for the theology department at Saint Louis University, has been a campus minister and edited for a religious publisher. She and her late husband were part of a national leadership team for marriage preparation and enrichment programs.

Hudson, 67, is a retired teacher who has been active in parish life. She's done prison ministry for the last 15 years.

Of the roughly 100 women who have been ordained as priests or deacons worldwide in the Womenpriests movement, including 37 in the U.S., only the first seven were officially excommunicated by the Vatican, said spokeswoman Bridget Mary Meehan. Others have received letters from their bishop like that sent by Burke, she said.

"It means you are no longer a Catholic in good standing, that by your very own decision you have chosen to separate yourself from the church," Meehan said. "But we are disobeying an unjust law that discriminates against women.

"Baptism makes us full members of the church for life."

McGrath also was penalized by the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, a Roman Catholic graduate school and seminary founded by the Dominican order.

The school said she was asked to withdraw from a class she was auditing for "taking part in ordination, which "undermines and shows disrespect for Catholic Church teaching and practice."

The service is taking place at Central Reform Congregation, a synagogue in St. Louis. In response, the archdiocese said on its Web site it would no longer partner with the congregation on any interfaith activities.

Rabbi Susan Talve said she and the congregation's board agreed to allow the ordination in their sacred space. She said hospitality and providing sanctuary are among their core values.

--

On the Net:

Archdiocese of St. Louis: http://www.archstl.org/

Roman Catholic Womenpriests

http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/

Central Reform Congregation: http://www.centralreform.org/

A Christian Nation

Sunday's NYT included an OP-ED from Jon Meacham on the idea of America's status--both now and "in the beginning"--as a "Christian Nation":

October 7, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation

By JON MEACHAM
JOHN McCAIN was not on the campus of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last year for very long — the senator, who once referred to Mr. Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” was there to receive an honorary degree — but he seems to have picked up some theology along with his academic hood. In an interview with Beliefnet.com last weekend, Mr. McCain repeated what is an article of faith among many American evangelicals: “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.”

According to Scripture, however, believers are to be wary of all mortal powers. Their home is the kingdom of God, which transcends all earthly things, not any particular nation-state. The Psalmist advises believers to “put not your trust in princes.” The author of Job says that the Lord “shows no partiality to princes nor regards the rich above the poor, for they are all the work of his hands.” Before Pilate, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And if, as Paul writes in Galatians, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” then it is difficult to see how there could be a distinction in God’s eyes between, say, an American and an Australian. In fact, there is no distinction if you believe Peter’s words in the Acts of the Apostles: “I most certainly believe now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears him and does what is right is welcome to him.”

The kingdom Jesus preached was radical. Not only are nations irrelevant, but families are, too: he instructs those who would be his disciples to give up all they have and all those they know to follow him.

The only acknowledgment of religion in the original Constitution is a utilitarian one: the document is dated “in the year of our Lord 1787.” Even the religion clause of the First Amendment is framed dryly and without reference to any particular faith. The Connecticut ratifying convention debated rewriting the preamble to take note of God’s authority, but the effort failed.

A pseudonymous opponent of the Connecticut proposal had some fun with the notion of a deity who would, in a sense, be checking the index for his name: “A low mind may imagine that God, like a foolish old man, will think himself slighted and dishonored if he is not complimented with a seat or a prologue of recognition in the Constitution.” Instead, the framers, the opponent wrote in The American Mercury, “come to us in the plain language of common sense and propose to our understanding a system of government as the invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down to dictate it, not a God appears in a dream to propose any part of it.”

While many states maintained established churches and religious tests for office — Massachusetts was the last to disestablish, in 1833 — the federal framers, in their refusal to link civil rights to religious observance or adherence, helped create a culture of religious liberty that ultimately carried the day.

Thomas Jefferson said that his bill for religious liberty in Virginia was “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindu, and infidel of every denomination.” When George Washington was inaugurated in New York in April 1789, Gershom Seixas, the hazan of Shearith Israel, was listed among the city’s clergymen (there were 14 in New York at the time) — a sign of acceptance and respect. The next year, Washington wrote the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I., saying, “happily the government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. ... Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Andrew Jackson resisted bids in the 1820s to form a “Christian party in politics.” Abraham Lincoln buried a proposed “Christian amendment” to the Constitution to declare the nation’s fealty to Jesus. Theodore Roosevelt defended William Howard Taft, a Unitarian, from religious attacks by supporters of William Jennings Bryan.

The founders were not anti-religion. Many of them were faithful in their personal lives, and in their public language they evoked God. They grounded the founding principle of the nation — that all men are created equal — in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry.

In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow, the diplomat-poet, to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty, finished after Washington left office, bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that “as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” there should be no cause for conflict over differences of “religious opinion” between countries.

The treaty passed the Senate unanimously. Mr. McCain is not the only American who would find it useful reading.

Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, is the author of “American Gospel” and “Franklin and Winston.”

Mr. Meacham is 100% correct in his estimation of both the origins of our peculiar approach to religion and in the misinterpretation of it. What his essay illustrates, however, is only one facet of the problem that 21st century Americans face in regards to religious pluralism. Often left out of the discussion is the question of what, if anything, can be done to further this pluralism, specifically, and communal decency, generally, in light of the claims of exclusivity of some branches of our faith traditions. How does a Christian fundamentalist, for example, reconcile John 14:16 (I am the way and the truth and the life...) and their vision of America as not only Christian in the sense that Christianity defines our identity, but that this is necessary (in a Shining-City-on-a-hill kind of way) to the fulfillment of the Great Commission, with rhetoric about religious freedom and the official neutrality of the United States government?

One approach was seen by those involved in the civil rights movement. There was the legislative and judicial side of things, of course; a recognition of the constitutional violations involved in denying anyone full citizenshiop because of the color of their skin. But commensurate with that was the framing by churches of the fight for civil rights as a religious and moral issue. I see this as the "missing prong" in the question of religious pluralism. I suspect that until religious folk, of whatever persuasion, get beyond the need for sole ownership of the Truth, true tolerance and appreciation for our religious differences will be in short supply.