Mitt Romney Creates Impressions

An old friend of mine had skills of creating impressions. A visit to his home opened as a page from a living room ad straight  out of the pages of Home Beautiful.  He and his wife showed up at the gates of BC’s football Stadium on my invitation. I gurgled on watching their approach. He wore a raccoon fur coat to his ankles. Carried a BC pennant in is left hand, and waved a maroon and gold baseball hat in our direction. She had a BC blanket the Eagle showing, draped over her shoulder.

Every time I see Mitt Romney on TV, I think of those two friends who had to have consulted magazines and websites in order to look the correctly decked out part of the scene in which they were to function for a while. Herewith, a fictional impression of Romney, equally skilled.

As Chairman of the Board and CEO of Bain Capital, Mitt Romney sits at his desk in a golden office. No need to describe the furniture or the floor to ceiling windows on three sides of the room. Just to note the desk is clean, stark empty of files, but swelling with jewels of deskpad, clock, Mont Blanc penstand, and a monogramed note pad, bereft of any markings. He himself is equally formidable, clad in an enormously expensive black business suit, patiently waiting for the phone to buzz. When it does his receptionist announces, “Sir, the Consultors Committee on the Friendly’s Bankruptcy is here.”

“Please have the escort lead them to the Boardroom. I am on my way now,” came in an unperturbed voice.

Moments later, the same voice begins “Gentlemen we meet to hear of your discussions and decision on whether we are to order Friendly’s, last year’s most prominent acquisition, to petition for bankruptcy. Consultors Chairman, please begin.”

That man, obviously the second most powerful man in the room, describes the committee’s formation, allocation of tasks for research, and history to date. He speaks, “Chairman Romney of Bain Capital, I will call upon subcommittee chairs, alternating between their decisions to file or not to file for bankruptcy of Friendly’s.”

Chairman Romney nods approval.

One by one each man around the table expounds on why Friendly’s should be placed in bankruptcy or not. In sparse detail, when compared with the weeks in which they were in session. The Consultors Chairman then announces, “Our vote is 4 in favor of bankruptcy; three opposed.”

Romney, a bit weary of having paid intense attention during each report, declares, “I will recess now for my own deliberation. We will meet in 15 minutes.”

When reconvened, Romney is the only person who speaks. “After listening to your reports and sitting alone in quiet deliberation of my own, I have decided tp accept the judgment pf the four in favor of bankruptcy. Consultors Chairman, please issue the order to the Chairman of the Bankruptcies Committee forthwith. Gentlemen Consultors, as Chairman of the Board of Bain Capital, I thank you.”

Turning to his principal assistant, Romney states, “Please have the Chairman of the Acquisitions Committee come to my office at 11:30, AM, prepared to begin discussions on whether we should acquire the Real Estate Development Company of Nevada, as our next order of business. It is in trouble and looks weak.”

Thus, Bain Capital adds another increase to its swollen list of successfull capital ventures. Note that Romney had no ideas or suggestions or favorites, no desires at all. His mind, as usual, was a blank slate, devoid of opinions or fears, waiting for other skilled business financiers to inform him of what they think. With his power, all he needs do is decide.

Like a Judge in a trial courtroom, he presides, without showing any favor to either side, refraining from exposing his own predilections, if any, waiting patiently for the moment when he is called upon to decide by a lawyer’s, “May  it please the Court, we object on the grounds of relevance.” 

To which, with little hesitation after listening to the other lawyer’s reasoning, the Judge decides: “Objection sustained,” or “Objection denied.”  The Judge has one duty and only one: to decide.

And that is what Mitt Romney does. He does not create; he sifts the creations of others. He does not plan; he assigns planning to consultors and their subchairs. He does not take risks; he commands others to take risks and report back to him for decision. He does create jobs, though, in deciding for acquisitions, only to destroy them when the acquired company has been looted of its assets and thrown out for rubbish.

And whenever he wants an idea for his mind to tinkle with, he calls a meeting of the real top-guns of Bain Capital to come in and chat with him. He looks good in a business suit, although his dog on the roof of the car thinks it a charade. 

Come to think of it, that’s what Mitt Romney is. A Charade of Impressions.

Presidential Campaign 2012

Remember when presidential campaigns of yore

Differed from this one on substance and issues.

But then, who can forget the year of Bush v. Gore,

Without reaching for a box of Kleenex tissues?

Candidates no longer speak as real men fighting on,

Day after day, wherever, out on the stump,

Pumping arms, beaming smiles in rain or sun,

Never daring to admit they might be in a slump.

You cannot count on them to come nobly through,

When their campaign starts slinging slander and lies

On political stuff they never did or even knew.

Campaigners past rarely dared tarnish the prize,

The one they sought in the vote you’d cast.

Flip-flops on issues and lies on what’s essential

Would smote them dumb, as if aghast,

For who’d vote for a liar so unpresidential?

A political party changes the tune this forlorn year,

Marked out of every four as a presidential campaign,

Blackened by attacks, lies flipped from downdeep fear

Oozing from the Republican Twain of Legerdemain.

Priests With Hands

You can tell a priest
by watching his hands, the way his fingers curl a bit,
yet leave the hand open for us to grasp and hold onto,
tightly. The same hands bless and consecrate bread
and wine waiting for them on altar's table.

Sundays I like
to go back to church to watch those hands arrange
godparents around the font, hover over infants, pour
water, wipe oil, brush like a kiss a last caress on tiny
head. Care-filled hands smile that great, priestly smile
when he hands baby back as a Catholic forever and
ever. Amen. Grown-ups around the font beam back
their smiles as radiant as the monstrance when held
high in those same hands at Benediction.

The hands of a priest
are quiet, though, in the dim light of the confessional,
folded in his lap, patient, waiting for my sins to end,
so as to be raised in absolution's forgiveness with that
blessing of all blessings, "I absolve you. Go, in peace."
And all is well again by the Sacrament of the shriven.
My soul is clean, for a while.

Priest creates God
as Eucharist, his hands holding bread as Jesus did
the night before he died, "This is my body," then
lifting chalice, "This is my blood." We all remember
"Do this in memory of me." Imitators offer the presence
of a real absence. Priest's hands bring down a promise,
a real presence, "I shall be with you for all time." We
walk in reverence to that awe-filled moment when his
hands place the wafer in our hands, and he says,
"The Body of Christ."

Our wedding
when we married each other before him would not
have been so, without his hands, warm, open, loving,
wavering over rings to be blessed, waiting in silent
prayer for vows to be spoken, blessing a bond bonding
lovers, then reaching for the ceiling high over the altar
with great joy. "And now, you may kiss the bride."

Words those hands
will rarely hear spoken to him, for his hands are not
his alone. They are ours, to be held in trust until
we need them one last time to help us take that one
last step to God. Hands of priests are fewer now, as
parishes get quashed in clusters by desperate bishops.
The supply of hands dwindles down, celibate males
grow older and older and younger ones no longer
appear magically in numbers needed to be there for
us, a sacramental people.

We are frightened
that the hands we knew were always there will not
always be there to bless and caress and baptize
and absolve and marry and wave us on as we cross
over. They won't be there to consecrate our eucharist,
the still point of our souls. Not even to wave with love
as we drive on by.

We pray for vocations,
for Episcopalian ministers to convert, for Rome to
relent and invite back into ministry thousands and
thousands and thousands of priests who married,
incurring by that very sacrament unrelenting rancour
of a papal martinet. Popes had elevated celibacy of
priests far loftier than sacraments, more important
than salvation of souls, made priests inconsequential
for the Lord's exhortation given his disciples, "Go
forth and teach all nations."

Stubborn Rome,
lost in the panoply of wealth and art and medieval
stuff, riveted in lust for power, cliqued as curial
cardinals, now refuses to provide priestly services for
the people of God, pontificates empty reason after
empty reason, emptying church of sacrament and people,
that celibates might clutch power unto themselves until
power itself is transfigured into power of nothing over
nobody. And church is gone.

It was not always so,
not in the very beginning when there were no priests
or bishops, just elders with hands, who later became
presbyters. Married priests with families lived their
day-in day-out love of woman with man, their children
calling "Daddy" shared their hands with God's people
calling them "Father." Their hands rose in blessings at
their own tables and in the postures of rites dispensing
sacraments freely, lovingly, for one thousand years.

Until a pope
decreed that priests could no longer marry and had to
become eunuchs. Might as well have cut off their hands
which bless and caress, for such popes destroyed the
priesthood on which the church depends for its mission
in life. It took a while. The second one thousand years
reeled under the harsh and swelling absolute power of
papal primacy, inquisition on inquisition, decree on
decree, unending official teachings to smother the heart
of being Catholic right out of all of us.

We need priests with hands.
If Rome will not bring them to us, we shall find our own
and bring them to ourselves and ourselves to them, to be
church once again, held together, welcomed with love,
lifted up, gently steered, patted on the back, beckoned
onward, caressed, consoled, counseled, comforted,
consecrated, guided, blessed, baptized, absolved, married,
befriended, assisted in dying on our final way to God,
by the hands of a priest.

The Issue is Religion Itself

It is good for us to share. When the voices we hear are more often than not the same old, same old, the ring of familiarity to their tones muffles the clarity of their thoughts. I speak for myself, alone, whose name pops up with a certain regularity in such a way that it isn’t necessary to read the words to hear what is being said. So, too, for other “regulars”, the talking folk.

Back in the beginning, which I guess is 2002, after the Boston Globe exposed the sordid scandal of sexual abuse of minors by clergy, the issues demanding room for outbursting were sexuality by celibates; authority out of Rome which invaded the bathroom as well as the bedrooms of all Catholics, celibate, lay, undecided, available; some dogmas that seemed as far out now as when first promulgated; doctrines spun out of half-cloth; decrees which sounded as if the decreer was fascinated by the sound of his voice; and other nonsensities. We who had not been tarnished by the scandal, whether as parents of minors so debauched, or as stern adults without desires to screw kids, thought we could walk the high road and demand that others pick themselves up out of the gutter, all by their onesies, to act with a dignity expected of a clergy fellow or sister.

We held our breaths, hoping that civilian authorities would continue to look the other way, after a bit of flustering to salve their consciences, and leave the investigations, uncoverings, and disposal of those who failed to act as if they were human beings with normal appetites and recreational pursuits. We weren’t so easy on bishops who covered up out of fear the church would lose some glitter from its reputation hard earned over two thousand years. Privately, a lot of us felt like throwing the bums out and starting all over with a new crew of men at the top for spectacular liturgies, commencement addresses, and regular appearances with pectoral cross chains in gold discreetly displayed between black lapels in a tasteful way to let others brushing by become aware that here stood a man of God, a Vir Ecclesiasticus.

To me, none of that. I fretted, of course, at the conspiracy to keep things quiet as the word was passed on from chancery to chancery throughout the world, with a Curia nodding assent, if not with a “Hurry up, get the word out. Look concerned. Cover up. Pretend you’re in control and are repairing the damage. Watch those bank balances carefully.” We saw through that, even as we had accepted similar conduct from the hierarchy at almost every scandalous outburst during two thousand years of slow growth from a mission church of Saints James, Thomas, Peter and Paul, spreading slowly around the Mediterranean.

We even felt a little glow of pride for the unbelievable powerful boys of Rome who sat above and talked with emperors and kings and their underlings, telling them precisely what they could and could not do, as Popes toppled the highest and the mightiest of the most powerful rulers of civilization, in the name of Jesus Christ the King. God help us, we even honored the name by which our church came to be known, not simply Catholic, but Roman Catholic Church, the one, true Church of God Himself.

No, none of that, but the tinges of those tassels out of history brushed by from time to time. Some of us, myself included, saw a startling, frightening, awesome issue that would obliterate humanity itself. We saw Religion as the issue. Religion itself. In whatever format, custom, language, church by any name. Lurking deadly beneath the whimpers of a boy being raped was not the degradation of the act of love into release of tension through orgasm with any living flesh of another. It was the emptiness of Religion itself, its colors and music and sacred literature and holy men and women notwithstanding. Would, no, could Religion survive, once the people saw that it and it alone was being challenged as the binding glue of civilization?

People who had gone beyond bishops in the extent and superiority of higher education beyond grammar school were beginning to think with their minds rather than their Baltimore Catechisms, 10 cents a copy in paperback, fits in the rear hip pocket. Trusting that such education could not possibly lead lay people to question themselves, bishops even allowed Catholics to buy and read and study and discuss the New Testament in the 1930s, for the very first time, even without a clergyman being present to define the funny words being used like incarnation, annunciation, assumption, virgin birth, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, infallibility, papacy.

Now that enough clergymen were being laid bare as profligate sex machines, not merely with attractive, seductive women or equally attractive, seductive men, but with little boys and girls, terms like resurrection and ascension came to be expected of illiterate apostles and disciples who took upon themselves the inhuman and impossible task of carrying the message of the Lord, whom they hardly knew or understood. We ourselves, gifted as we are, expected as much of early Christians, who, in our glorification of our church’s early years and later history were nothing less than miraculous. We had heard of slaughters in the election of popes in the first few hundred years.

We even read about the crusades as if we were reading books on the NFL and its string of Super Bowls, and cheered our troops on for their bravery in going to war for Jesus, disregarding the obvious sad ending that they lost the wars. We thought, I guess, that Super Bowls and World Series were memorable only for the winners and their fans. So much so that we couldn’t even remember with much accuracy which teams were the losers, coming in second best overall.

And so, now, today, ten whole long years after the Boston Globe’s first story about priests and kids, we’re beginning to focus on the issue of our times, bar none.

· Does Religion have a place in our world?

· Do we need an organized church at all?

· Must we submit to hierarchs as leaders whom we must obey?

· Did Jesus himself found any church?

· Did Jesus himself found a religion?

· Were the founders of Catholicism just a couple of apostles?

· Could a Paul of Tarsus, who never saw, heard or met Jesus be his principal spokesperson?

· Has Religion, in any formal form, passed its time?

· Are we not spiritual beings, as well as human?

· Is spirituality, whatever it may be, the successor to organized religions?

· Is religion a discarded term of the early years with A.D. after the number?

· Are we growing up now as people, ready and able to become one world?

· Is the Paraclete close by, urging us on?

It’s hard to stop adding up the questions, isn’t it? Religion has been, perhaps, the most powerful and dominating force in the history of the human race, has it not? For those who love and live in the past with memories, can we shuck off a church and all its panoply and culture and kind and loving servants of the servants of God? So, let the questions roll:

· Can we go it alone?

· Must we have a great big bunch of communities to hold us together?

· What would we call them, if the term ‘church’ is no longer meaningful?

· Do we hunt for what might soon be called a synonym for Religion?

· Should we get bogged down in what we decide to call ourselves?

· Has anyone of us asked the Paraclete for help?

· Do we remember Dan’s question: “God, where in the world are you?”

Paul,

· Wondering

· Asking

· I have no answers

Vir Ecclesiasticus

When asked for my comments on Rome’s continental law mentality and the CDF, they have to be knee-jerk. I know little about the CDF, less about continental law and almost nothing about mentality.

Aware of the CDF’s ruthless wipeout of the professional lives of so many outstanding scholars in various fields of theology, despite the international reputations crowning their work, I am leery of my own emotional reactions to the way then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, operated that Dicastery. In my opinion, he stands with Pope John Paul II as a cruel man. My emotional reactions tinge both men in the way they breathe and move and have their being.

There is that ugly picture of JPII in 1983 Mexico, wagging fingers of both hands at a kneeling Fr. Ernesto Cardinal, berating him for Liberation Theology. I still feel the anger that flushed then.

I still feel my impotent rage at his deadly cruelty to Fr. General Pedro Arrupe, SJ, at whose feet I once sat in our Scholastic’s rec room at Sophia University in Tokyo. I just don’t like Karol Jozef Wojtyla or Jozef Aloisius Ratzinger.

Therefore, I am too overwhelmingly biased to offer any worthwhile comment. They made those judgments. Only a few stood to object. Most of the rest didn’t rock the boat. Today, a few of us bemoan and know that all we can do is pray for change and toss off our own emotion-ridden obsessions with them as people I’m grateful not to have known on a personal basis. Same goes for a whole host of other politicians in national and international stages. These two are but peas in a pod among lots of pods.

A Jesuit friend of mine, objecting to my expressions of dismay with Church government, said of himself, “I am a professional churchman. That was echoed by Robert Imbelli in the Foreword to a book on Cardinal Avery Dulles: “One of the most heartfelt accolades the early Fathers could bestow on a theologian was to praise him as vir ecclesiasticus: an ecclesial man.”

I agree and maintain either expression as high regard, proper assessment, worthy title for that person’s devotion to Church. One mighty action we can do together to honor these people and the Church is to praise a good and worthy Professional Churchman by acknowledging him publicly as Vir Ecclesiasticus. While we are at it, we might just as well start choosing each Professional Churchwoman as worthy of Femina Ecclesiastica. When the two go together, side by side, we will have an authentic Church about which we may continue authentic dialogue.

A Priest Writes to his Bishop for Dialogue

Letter to Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, Diocese of Seattle from Fr. John D. Whitney, SJ, Pastor, about requests of parishioners for dialogue on Church issues..

WSCC – The Washington State Catholic Conference. Bishops of the State. http://thewscc.org/

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, Seattle, assigned by the Vatican as “archbishop delegate” of the Triumverate assessing the LCWR

Fr. John D. Whitney, S.J. Pastor St, Joseph Parish, former Provincial Oregon Province. 206.300.6010

*****

Members of St. Joseph Parish:

When I came before the community several weeks ago, seeking your help to meet the Annual Catholic Appeal, I noted that many of you seemed ambivalent about pledging to the ACA: wondering if your pledge did not suggest more support of the direction of the Archdiocese than you intended. At that time, I invited those who wished to give directly to the Parish, and said that I would use equivalent Parish funds to pay the ACA. I also said I would send a letter to the Archbishop, explaining the circuitous path of our donations. Below is the letter I have sent. I hope I have captured the spirit of those of you who chose to direct your donation through the Parish, without suggesting that all feel the same way. I pray this letter may begin a constructive dialogue.

Yours in Christ,

3 August 2012

The Most Reverend Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, D.D., S.T.L. Archbishop of Seattle 710 9th Avenue Seattle, WA 98104-2017

Dear Archbishop Sartain, Peace of Christ!

With this letter you will find a check from St. Joseph Parish in the amount of $27,675.00, given as a partial payment of this year’s Annual Catholic Appeal. In sending you this check, along with this letter, I am representing the desires of many members of St. Joseph Parish who love the Church and seek to serve it with their lives, but who could not, in conscience, donate directly to the ACA at this time. This was not because these parishioners do not support much of what the Annual Catholic Appeal does; rather, they have withheld their ACA pledge, or have minimized it, or have redirected it because they find such an action the only means by which they can exercise the prophetic role to which they are called by their baptism. Unable to exercise an active voice in the discernment of decisions made by those charged with leadership in the Church, these parishioners have sought a venue in which they could be heard: i.e., through the financial care of the Church and her mission.

Two areas of particular concern for many of the active members of St. Joseph regard (1) the position of the Washington Catholic Conference on Referendum 74, and (2) the intervention by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in the internal governance of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

Regarding the first of these issues, I would note that many—though not all—in the Parish consider the Church’s engagement in this piece of civil legislation inappropriate. For these parishioners, the Referendum does not address marriage in the sacramental sense, but involves an issue of civil rights. Though they have received the material distributed through the WSCC, many believe that the national statements of Church leaders, as well as the local involvement on this issue, foster injustice in civil society, contrary to their conscience. Likewise, the immediate move to advocacy by the WSCC, rather than a process of dialogue and prayerful discernment, made many feel alienated and, as they have told me, damaged the Church’s role as educator of conscience. For many, this damage was exacerbated when the Archdiocese called for the solicitation of signatures in parishes, following Sunday Eucharist, in support of bringing the Referendum to the ballot. Indeed, even many of those who oppose the Referendum and support the WSCC’s position found this unprecedented action inappropriately partisan and contrary to the spirit which they seek in weekly Eucharist; thus, they encouraged me to make the pastoral decision I did.

Yet, if many at St. Joseph were unhappy about the level of advocacy regarding Referendum 74, their understanding of the Church’s stance on homosexuality meant that they were not wholly surprised by the position of the WSCC. However, with the CDF’s intervention against the LCWR, a more spontaneous and, it seems to me, profound sense of dismay and disedification was unleashed. The group, Standing With the Sisters, arose spontaneously in the Parish, from the conversations of several women who felt that the action of the CDF was directed against them, as well as against the Religious Women of the LCWR—part of systemic disempowerment of women within the Church. The importance of so many women’s religious communities—Holy Names, Providence, Sacred Heart, St. Joseph

of Peace, Mercy, Dominican, Franciscan, etc.—in the shaping of St. Joseph and its members made the action of the CDF extremely personal and disheartening to many of the ordinary women and men of this community, and continues to animate them—as it does so many across the country.

It is also true, Archbishop, that your acceptance of the role of implementor of the verdict of the CDF has been both a cause of sorrow and hope among members of the Parish. You are seen as a man of prayer and one welcoming to the views of others. Even on the issue of Referendum 74, you have been seen as pastorally sensitive and personally kind. The people of St. Joseph care for you and, I believe, pray for you regularly (even outside the Eucharistic Prayer). Yet, at the same time many feel uncertain by your decision to accept this appointment, and have sought to understand your participation in this action against some of those who are best and holiest within our Church. As with Referendum 74, the result of the intervention has been to alienate many in the community from the larger Church, and, indeed, sometimes even from the Parish—all of which has had a significant effect on the Annual Catholic Appeal.

When I heard from many traditional donors and long-time members of the Parish that they would not be giving to ACA this year, because of the direction of the Archdiocese, I grew concerned and spoke repeatedly from the pulpit about the good work done by the ACA, referring, at times, to your commitment not to spend any ACA funds on the Referendum 74 campaign. Still, several weeks ago, we found ourselves with $55,000 still outstanding in our ACA assessment. Thus, I decided to try another tack: I came before the Parish, telling them of the shortage and the need to meet the assessment, since our budget could not afford a shortfall. I then asked them to pledge to the ACA or, if they could not in conscience do so, to give to the Parish in a special envelope, provided in the back of the Church, with which we would pay the assessment. I committed to them that I would pass on their concerns with the money we raised, though I also encouraged all who wished to write to you directly. This letter is the result of that commitment, since we raised, in a few weeks, almost $28,000, from 67 families, who chose to give to the Parish in lieu of pledging to the Archdiocese. Representing more than 20% of the total raised or pledged at St. Joseph for the ACA, I think this figure a significant enough amount to ask what it means to the Archdiocese and to the Church.

Archbishop Sartain, the members of St. Joseph who have held back or redirected their gifts are not uninvolved or "casual" Catholics—they love the Church and are, for the most part, faithful and hopeful people. They have listened to the gospel and learned the lessons of faith since Vatican II; many have deepened their faith lives through spiritual reading and prayer, and long for the gift of the Eucharist and the life of the sacraments. They grumbled at times but have embraced the revised liturgy. They worry about their children’s perseverance in the faith, and support Catholic education and the works of outreach and service. For the most part, they love and revere the Holy Father and their Archbishop; yet they are also concerned that the Spirit who moves not only in the hierarchy, but in the whole Church—the whole People of God—is not being heard or attended to. They want to understand and to engage in a communal dialogue that they see as foundational of our faith—not rebellious to hierarchy, but in communion with those who have received the mission of leadership in the Church. Though we have done a great deal of such dialogue at a local level—with gatherings on formation of conscience and the reading of Scripture, discernment and its application—there is a deep desire to do it with the primary Pastor of the Church in this region.

And so, Archbishop, I would like to invite you to come to St. Joseph, at a time convenient to you, to speak with the members of the Parish and to listen to them—to engage together with the people of St. Joseph in listening to the Spirit moving in the Church. I promise to do all I can to facilitate such a gathering, and to ensure that it is prayerfully centered and built on the hope and faith which are the signs of the Spirit.

At General Congregation 35, the Holy Father called the members of the Society of Jesus to recall our founders, and to build bridges between the heart of the Church and its frontiers. It is ironic, perhaps, that such bridge-building would occur even within the life of such a firmly Catholic parish as St. Joseph; yet, this is what I see these days to be: a time of bridges, when the heart reaches out to the frontier and the frontier renews the heart. May Christ Jesus, the head of the Church, in whom "the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord" (Ephesians 2:21), sustain us in this good work and lead us to become his temple.

Your servant in the Lord,

John D. Whitney, S.J. Pastor 206.300.6010

Why Won’t Bishops Talk With Us?

Apart from gold medals at Olympics or heart-warming stories of a kind person’s deeds, daily news is about opposition. If somebody says something and nobody objects; no news. If there is an objection, both are interviewed by glib pundits whose stated desire is to resolve differences; if not, then to fan the flames. Be it war, rebellion, taxes, offshore banks, a national debt terrifying in its solitude, rules and regulations for and against doing business, even the word of God and whatever theology God’s word enhances, if not supports.

Examples? Syria. American Presidential Campaign. College Football. The Speeding Bullet crashing as it tried to cross the country in an hour. Condoms kill procreation. Dad hoping for pancakes and bacon for breakfast, rather than one slice of wheat toast, no butter. Homosexuals are not human. Life itself, in all its aspects is, a contest of opposites, rather than a dull, boring still picture, without using a flash. Trial lawyers do not exist as a profession unless there are at least two sides In a case. If she stood so silent with expectancy hovering on her lips, then why did she slap my face when mine got closer, lips puckered? If guns kill people, and if people kill people, isn’t it simple to go on to people with guns kill people? In movie theatres, shopping centers, churches of minor denominations from foreign countries, as Christianity out of Europe once was.

Think on Theology, as an academic discipline if you will. For centuries, I guess, it has been taught in threes: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. What comes out the other end is Theology, a/k/a doctrine, dogma, decree. God’s word for man. One problem. To get to synthesis, a theology student must listen to the professor profess on and on about thesis and antithesis, and whoopsie-doo, pull synthesis out of his magician’s top hat. Note: it is a singularity.

Theology is the only academic discipline held together in the same infallibility by which it was begun: God said so. No other college course can make that claim, not even philosophy, once the immature child growing up to be theology. Mathematics might look like it comes close, but consider the answers doctoral candidates offer to the question: What will your thesis be on?

Along the way, minds have to wander in wonder, perhaps, to be silly about it all, in the lurking question: “Where on earth did this stuff come from?” The professor smiles, knowing full well that synthesis is irrefutable, as well as infallible, because he said so, and so did his teacher. Note, he got his degree, PhD or STD in Graduate School, and it was taught by eminent holders of the same degrees. They gave him the mystery of thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Those who govern his church discard thesis and antithesis and rule that synthesis is infallible. And he said “Aha!” to their “Voila!”

          That is why Rome does not allow discussion. The Magisterium is frozen still, like a lake in the high Alps or the tundra of Siberia, or the ice island continent of Antarctica. As frozen as a Roman Dicastery or the Chapel of the Little Flower downtown. Ever drop into a bishop’s chancery, unable to take your topcoat off because of the silent chill throughout the building?

A few weeks ago, daring, dauntless scientists discovered the boson nicknamed The God Particle. Yesterday, the discovery of a Galaxy Universe, creating 700 stars a day, billions and billions of light years from us, was made by another group of eager scientists, long, long gone beyond thesis, antithesis, synthesis as an educative tool. Man wants to know. Man needs to know.

How, in God’s Name, can the church’s leaders say any of the following? “This is the Magisterium. That’s it. It is infallible, because we are infallible when we do theology. There is nothing further to know. Kneel and we will give you our blessing. Oh! And by the way, shut up or get out. ” Bishops protest that they do not act this way.

But, they do, don’t they? Just ask the LCWR, or an old man like myself. I could guess that I’m way off-base on Theology, but why won’t the Church let us talk together about what could very well be the most important topic of our lives?