Father Kevin Laughery's Weblog

Subject: Shutting down this blog
Time: 9:56:56 PM CDT
Author:  exsult1

I have decided to do my blogging in the same place where I post my homilies; henceforth go to

http://exsult1.libsyn.com

 

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Subject: I'm on TV
Time: 12:58:38 PM CST
Author:  exsult1

See Mark McDonald interview Rabbi Barry Marks and Father Kevin Laughery on Reflections on Religion, a half-hour program to be aired on public TV station WSEC, three times next week: Tuesday, Feb. 28, 6:30 pm; Thursday, March 2, 7:00 pm; Friday, March 3, 6:30 pm. WSEC's transmitter is in Chatham, so if you still pull in broadcast signals, you can view the program on channel 14. WSEC is not on Auburn's cable system, but here are the channels for other cities: Pawnee channel 5; Divernon, Chatham, Springfield, Decatur channel 8. The program focuses on developments in Jewish-Catholic relations, and is occasioned by an observance in Springfield of the fortieth anniversary of the ground-breaking Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate, on the relation of the Catholic Church to non-Christian religions. The Springfield observance will take the form of a discussion with Jewish and Catholic scholars; go to the post below for complete information on the discussion, which takes place Sunday, March 5, 7:00 pm, at Saint Agnes Catholic Church, 245 North Amos Avenue, Springfield, Illinois.

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Subject: Interfaith event
Time: 12:22:01 PM CST
Author:  exsult1


FORTY YEARS
have come and gone since
the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.
Please take time to reflect on the challenge given in Vatican II
to Catholic Christians in their relations with people of non-Christian religions.
 
The Catholic Diocese of Springfield in Illinois and the Springfield Jewish Federation
are proud to co-sponsor a discussion
on the groundbreaking Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”)
with Jewish and Catholic scholars
 
RABBI DAVID FOX SANDMEL, PH.D.
K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Congregation, Chicago
Crown-Ryan Professor of Jewish Studies,
Catholic Theological Union, Chicago
 
FR. JOHN PAWLIKOWSKI, OSM, PH.D.
Professor of Social Ethics, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago
Director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program of CTU’s Cardinal Joseph Bernardin Center
 
Sunday, March 5, 2006, 7:00 pm
Saint Agnes Catholic Church, 245 North Amos Avenue, Springfield, Illinois
 
Please attend this discussion, offer your questions and comments,
and stay for some socializing afterward.
 
Read Nostra Aetate: http://hcp.dio.org/na.html

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Subject: Bullying in the name of religion
Time: 7:52:21 PM CST
Author:  exsult1

I have just finished reading yesterday's 139-page decision regarding the school board of Dover, Pennsylvania.  It recounts a stark and stupid series of events by which supposedly Christian people intimidated others as they sought to carry out their not-so-intelligent designs.  You can find the decision at

http://www.nytimes.com/evolution

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Subject: Vatican II Retrospective
Time: 6:02:15 PM CST
Author:  exsult1

VATICAN II RETROSPECTIVE
ADAPTED FOR CATHOLIC TIMES IN 2005 FROM A SPEECH GIVEN IN 1992

The fall of 1965 was a great time to be a Catholic – even an eight-year-old Catholic – in America.  In my third-grade classroom at Our Lady of Lourdes School in Decatur, something utterly extraordinary happened.  On Monday, October 4, my classroom and every classroom in the building had a television set which was left on, as I recall, all day.  The reason for these arrangements: Pope Paul VI was making a one-day visit to New York City and the United Nations headquarters.

To Catholics younger than I – people who have witnessed in their youth the multiple American visits and other travels of Pope John Paul II – the attention we spent on following this visit may seem to be quite foolish.  But this visit was groundbreaking.  Never before had a reigning Pope traveled to the Americas.  Indeed, in recent times, Roman Pontiffs, asserting their temporal sovereignty over what was left of the Papal States, acted as "prisoners of the Vatican" and tended
not to emerge from those 108.7 acres on the west side of the Tiber.  But here we had a Pope entering the New World, giving a speech at the seat of our planet's best attempt at forming a temporal world order, and celebrating Mass in Yankee Stadium.  This one-day visit was a stunning and beautiful assertion of the engagement of the Catholic Church in the concerns of a world full of perils. 

If I had been just a little older at the time, I would have had some understanding that this visit was one example of a call to change in our Church which was coming from a Council which was about to finish up its work that fall of 1965.  I recall being told of "an important meeting" that was going on at the Vatican.  It was not until 1977, in my second year of seminary, that in my mind I made a local "connection" with Vatican II.  Bishop William O'Connor, who had retired as our
bishop in 1975, spoke to us seminarians about his experiences at the Council.  I must confess that, until that moment, it had not crossed my mind that my own bishop had been there – but, of course, the Council was a gathering of all the world's Catholic bishops. 

One very important thing to know about the Council was that it wasn't supposed to happen.  The College of Cardinals, having assembled in conclave after the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, found itself deadlocked after several ballots -- after several rounds of collecting the inconclusive votes and burning them to create the black smoke that told the crowds in St. Peter's Square to keep waiting.  The papal electors did not know for sure whom they wanted to be the new pope.  So they decided to buy time.  They could do so by electing an older man who would have a brief term in the See of Rome -- a man who would not do anything of consequence.  During those few years, the cardinals could reach a consensus regarding the next man who would truly pilot the bark of Peter.  And so, as their interim pope, the papal electors chose the Patriarch of Venice, Angelo Cardinal Roncalli, age seventy-six.  His, certainly, would be a caretaker papacy.

And so the College of Cardinals was stunned by the announcement that Roncalli, now John XXIII, made to them on Sunday, January 25, 1959, Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.  Pope John called for three things:  a synod of the Diocese of Rome, of which he, of course, was bishop; the revision of the Code of Canon Law, which had come into force only in 1918; and an ecumenical council.

Why on earth was this man calling for an ecumenical council?  It seemed sheer madness to so many.  As the Roman Catholic perspective would have it, ecumenical councils were called at times when it was necessary to settle some controversy about the dogma of the Church.  The great councils of Nicea and Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon, in the fourth and fifth centuries, hammered out the creed that the faithful recited Sunday after Sunday, and
anathematized those who could not accept those creedal statements.  Councils through the course of the Middle Ages were the definitive rebuke to theologians who proposed a novel teaching, developed a following, and caused dissension.  Trent in the sixteenth century was, in many respects, a process of getting one's own house in order; but it also formalized the parting of ways between Rome and those who would henceforth be described as "protesting" the brand of Christianity that was under Rome's sway.  The First Vatican Council in 1870 asserted the uniqueness and preeminence of Roman Catholic Christianity against any and all who, for reasons of theology or of a willingness to assert a more democratic model of authority, impugned the concept of supreme divine authority's being concentrated in the figure of one man with an extremely exalted title.

Why on earth did we need an ecumenical council?  The Christian centuries had been a process of establishing a Church that was a paragon of clarity.  That is to say, it was clear to any believer, anywhere in the world, what the Church was, who it was that exercised authority, and what was expected of any faithful follower.  What more could one want?

Well, much was wanting.  The state of the human family demonstrated that the business of living an authentic human life in union with a supreme divine Principle could not be equated with the conventional model of authority.  Too much was missing from this model.  Too great a reliance on this model, down through the centuries, had reinforced an unhealthy distrust of self.  People who habitually distrust themselves and their own feelings become accustomed to a state of
alienation from their very selves.  People who look to the pronouncements of exalted religious authorities, to the exclusion of the authority dwelling in their hearts, will be all the more pliable to the will of exalted civil authorities, who will claim to enjoy a substantial share in the divine authority embodied in the religious authorities.  People so alienated from themselves, and so credulous before so-called "leaders," will be capable of anything.

People capable of anything.  These words pretty well describe the twentieth century.  The last century was a time of unprecedented brutality and cruelty.  How can one comprehend the spectacle of so-called "Christian" countries gunning down and gassing one another's young men in the trenches of a war that for many years thereafter was dignified with the adjective "Great"?  How can one comprehend the sight of one people's becoming so demonized in the sight of others that those others could so calmly and systematically engage in genocide?  Two world wars, and
various atrocities scattered round about, constitute for all believing people an enigma that must be dealt with if we are to enjoy any credibility whatever.  After all these centuries of God-talk -- after all these centuries of professing that we revere God -- how is it that we have failed so miserably in revering the image of God in people?

Angelo Roncalli observed the mid-twentieth century as a Vatican diplomat, serving in Bulgaria from 1925, in Turkey and Greece from 1934, and in France from 1944 to 1953.  No doubt he stored up in his heart a sense of the ugly dissonance between glib God-talk and the shameful institutionalized desecration of people.  No doubt he saw some sanity breaking into the madness.  He could look back, for instance, to 1891 and to Pope Leo XIII's resounding defense of the rights of workers amid the dehumanizing currents of the Industrial Revolution.  He could rejoice in various grass-roots efforts to allow the faithful to hear a fresh, direct word, spoken in their own language, in their own idiom.  He stored up various things in his heart as he went about his duties.  Few, apparently, had any idea of the depth of feeling in his soul.  No one suspected that this career diplomat could go about his duties so quietly, and then, at the age of seventy-seven, lift his voice to call together a council that would be a catalyst for radical change.

Why on earth did we need an ecumenical council?  Had dogmas been blurred?  Yes, they had.  For too long a time, believing people had engaged in what George Orwell, in his novel Nineteen Eighty-four, had described using a term of his own devising: "doublethink," the simultaneous profession of two contradictory beliefs.  In spite of our belief in a God who had entered human history and who had established an unbreakable bond with people, we were too quick to envision our earthly existence as a "vale of tears," an "exile" which we simply had to endure until the beginning of "real life" after death.  If earthly existence is an exile, then it doesn't have to make sense.  We can explain any sort of injustice, any madness whatever, as simply "the way it is in this vale of tears."  We don't recognize any responsibility for shaping a world that bears the imprint of a compassionate God.  We don't have to be compassionate ourselves.  This "doublethink" has let madness run wild.  We suffer the madness every day.  Indeed a dogma had been blurred.  We had devalued the whole human family.

The Second Vatican Council developed into a source of great strength precisely because it affirmed the value of the human person when that value had tended to be denied amid the prevailing madness.  Pope John XXIII opened the Council on October 11, 1962.  Following his death on June 3, 1963, the new pope, Giovanni Battista Montini, who took the name Paul VI, committed himself to the completion of the work of the Council.

Every Catholic must enjoy some familiarity with the history of the council and some acquaintance with the sixteen documents it issued.  I recommend a book I read in college seminary: Vatican Council II by Xavier Rynne (a pseudonym).  I would like briefly to make some mention of a select few documents and the ways in which they affirm the real value of people before God.

The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church plumbs the identity of the Church to an
unprecedented depth.  It declares that, fundamentally, the Church is a mystery -- but not a mystery in the sense that the word might be used by a religion teacher disposing of a tough question proposed by an annoyingly bright child.  No, the Church is declared to be a mystery in the sense that it is a dynamic entity ever on pilgrimage.  The primary image used to describe the mystery is "People of God."  This image indeed controls the development of thought in this document.  For prior to any distinctions being made regarding clergy and laity, hierarchy and "the flock," the document considers what all believers have in common by reason of their baptism.  It describes a "universal call to holiness" and affirms the giftedness and worth of all.  Furthermore, the document considers the various ways in which one can be considered associated with the People of God.  It goes so far as to assert a kinship among all people of good will.  This assertion comes as a kind of a shock for those who can't imagine God being so sociable.

The Decree on Ecumenism calls disunity among Christians a "scandal" and mandates processes of common study, dialogue, and joint worship, so that we might treasure all that unites us as we seek to dissolve what divides us.

The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions brings words of charity and healing into situations that have all too often been marked by rancor and strife.  Says the Declaration:  "The Church ... urges her children to enter with prudence and charity into discussion and collaboration with members of other religions.  Let Christians, while witnessing to their own faith and way of life, acknowledge, preserve and encourage the spiritual and moral truths found among non-Christians, also their social life and culture."  What more can one add to this exhortation?  One could abbreviate it as follows:  "Get busy.  Be respectful.  Be sensitive.  Be open."  We in the Springfield Diocese can proudly look forward to our co-sponsorship of a program on this document, with Catholic and Jewish scholars presenting their insights, on Sunday, March 5.

Finally, the Declaration on Religious Liberty deserves our attention.  This, undoubtedly, was the most controversial document to issue from Vatican Council II.  Could the Catholic Church affirm an inviolable human right to seek the truth in accord with conscience?  Those who resisted such an affirmation held that the Church would be granting breathing room for error, and "error has no rights."  Indeed, error has no rights.  Only people have rights.  And all people have a right
to their own conscience.

These highlights of a few of the Council documents demonstrate the degree to which the Roman Catholic Church was committing itself to what I like to call a "personalistic revolution."  We sought to revere God by developing our reverence for the human person.  There's never been a perfect revolution.  As I examine the plans for the revolution, I find that much is still wanting.  The council did not go very far in exploring the fundamental element of personhood that is our sexuality.  What treatment it did give to issues of sexuality tended to send out mixed signals. 
Entire documents, for instance, were dedicated to a discussion of the life and ministry of bishops, priests, and religious -- people whose lives are very much defined by the discipline of celibate chastity.  Those whose lives are defined by married chastity, on the other hand, did not merit a document of their own.  A discussion of marriage is relegated to a few brief sections of a lengthy and sweeping Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World -- as if the Church had
just stumbled on the modern world and discovered that marriage was a part of it.  I am proud of my Church for its prophetic witness that we are stewards, not owners, of our bodies and especially of our reproductive powers.  I recognize, however, that our ambivalence about sexuality makes our witness less credible than it could be.

What changes in the Church I was personally aware of on October 4, 1965 – for instance, the move to liturgical celebration in our native language, after my having received my first Communion in Latin in 1964 – was just the beginning of a profound process of change in which all of us Catholics are still participating.  I, who as a first-grader knew long passages of the Latin Mass by heart, and who as a second-grader promptly forgot it all, have found myself particularly pliable to change of a sort.  For all I knew, we changed languages every year.  Occasionally I
would hear the nervous assertion:  "We're changing the externals, but the essence remains the same."  I cannot completely agree.  The external changes reflect a revolution shaking the Church to its very foundations.  We have been called to discover that our life is not defined by intellectual assent to certain propositions, but by a constant process of discovery of what it means to be fully human.  We are challenged to look upon Jesus as the meaning of what it is to be human.  We are
chastened in realizing that he himself would not have us force him on others.  We are stilled in realizing that human life is fundamentally graced.  We are empowered to approach life with a sense of freedom and serenity.

In 1977, Bishop O'Connor told us seminarians of the manner in which he was accustomed to introduce himself to brother bishops from across the world.  He would mention Abraham Lincoln.  Bishop O'Connor thereby affirmed that the worldwide effort of the Second Vatican Council was an act of striving toward a genuinely human world.  Lincoln, of course, is our most precious local example of a contender in the worldwide arena for a fuller answer to the question of what it
means to be human.  Although his many years of residence in the territory of our diocese did not include adherence to any Christian church, Lincoln revealed himself (especially in his Second Inaugural of 1865) to have a much more theological turn of mind than many who explicitly identify with a Christian community.  The very life of Lincoln is a reminder of the often unrecognized gift of people without explicit faith who must be in dialogue with believers about establishing a truly human world community.  Since we Catholics of Springfield in Illinois have great reverence for Lincoln, we have before our minds a vivid example of the "people of good will" whom Vatican II refers to (and, indeed, addresses!) very frequently.  The Second Vatican Council was all about the Church affirming our world and the good people found in it, whatever names they bear. 

The man who celebrated Mass in Yankee Stadium knew what he was doing.  He knew that Jesus called his disciples to embrace the world, not to shun it.  Forty years hence, we Catholic Christians must let the pronouncements of Vatican II echo in our hearts and move us to proclaim the love of the Incarnate God for every human being.

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Subject: Notes on Eucharist
Time: 9:42:08 AM CDT
Author:  exsult1

Following are my notes on the talk on the Eucharist which I gave on Wednesday, October 12.  Hear the talk at

http://exsult1.libsyn.com

THE SACRAMENT OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST

Father Kevin Laughery, Auburn, Illinois, Wednesday, October 12, 2005

The year 2005 was designated by Pope John Paul II as the "Year of the Eucharist."

It is utterly evident to us that the Holy Eucharist is foundational in our lives as Catholic Christians.

The importance of food and drink: absolutely obvious to us as human beings.

What is our understanding of God? We, as Christians, who enjoy the heritage of the people of Israel, do not perceive God in detached philosophical terms. We understand our God as a passionate, emotional God who is involved in human history. Our God makes his dwelling place among us: "The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs."

We may think of the intimacy of the act of giving food and being fed. Think of a mother providing nourishment to her child, both before and after birth. Sharing a meal, even with social etiquette and conventions, is likewise still a very intimate act. For people to be at the same table together means that there is a bond among them.

The liberation of the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt is commemorated every year in the Passover meal. Easter is the Christian Passover. Jesus is the Lamb slain for us.

We understand our union with Jesus Christ in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, to be utterly personal and intimate.

The Gospels are consistent and unambiguous in affirming that Jesus wanted his people to commune with him by eating his body and drinking his blood. The scoffers of John 6 may express a feeling we may have had – that such a practice would be barbaric – but again, we can turn to the intimacy of the mother and child, and have some appreciation of what Jesus is actually calling for.

The term eucharist is not found in the Bible. Epistles refer to "the Lord’s Supper." Luke’s Gospel, in the Emmaus incident, refers to "the breaking of bread." Likewise in the Acts of the Apostles.

Eucharist is Greek for "thanksgiving." Mass is derived from Ite, missa est, the dismissal at the very end of the Eucharistic celebration.

The sacrament of the Eucharist is:

– a meal

– the sacrifice of Jesus (Passover Lamb)

– a memorial – let us be clear on the meaning of memorial here. It is not a mere recollection; it is the breaking of barriers between the past and the present.

– communion: individuals communing with God, of course, and individuals discovering their bond with other human beings who are hungry and thirsty for meaning and seeking to love one another.

Our faith in the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Over the centuries, the Church has attempted to explain philosophically how a thing could be transformed into something completely different and yet retain its original appearances. Most people today are not conversant in such concepts as substance and accidents. These are concepts presupposed by the term transubstanti-ation. In Catholic Christian theology, the tendency is simply to state that "the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ" without trying further to analyze how this change comes about.

When someone says, "The Eucharist is a symbol," is this a degrading of the full meaning of the Eucharist? The meaning of symbol.

Why bread and wine? The Gospel accounts of the Last Supper. Bread and wine were, of course, common elements in the Passover meal, and we have indications, again from the Gospels, that the Last Supper was a Passover meal (seder). We as the Church understand that we are to have continuity with the practice of Jesus. We hold that bread made only of wheat and wine made from grapes constitute valid matter.

Both bread (celiac disease) and wine (alcoholism) present potential problems to partakers. How the Church has addressed these problems.

Who can preside at Eucharist and consecrate the sacrament? We know very well that only a bishop or presbyter (what we commonly call a "priest"), empowered by the sacrament of holy orders, can so preside and consecrate.

Catholic Christians’ participation in the Eucharist is mandatory on Sunday, the day of Jesus’ resurrection, and on a few additional "holy days of obligation." Our liturgical calendar is set up with the expectation of a celebration of the Eucharist every day of the year except Good Friday, when we have the Easter Triduum "celebration of the Lord’s Passion" and distribute communion from hosts consecrated at a previous Mass.

Who may receive the Holy Eucharist? Baptism confers a right to the sacrament. Children must be old enough to have some understanding and appreciation of the sacrament.

We do not extend a general invitation to non-Catholic Christians to receive the Eucharist. The reasons for this:

– Eucharist is the ultimate sacrament of unity. Those who come to the Eucharistic table must truly be united with one another. Disunity among Christians must be overcome. We must achieve the unity that Jesus intends for all his people.

– Unity presupposes that all partaking in that unity have a shared understanding of the passing on of the faculty to consecrate the Eucharist. In the Catholic Church, we understand that Jesus entrusted the apostles with the ministry of "doing this in memory of me." We understand that, by apostolic succession, the apostles (the first bishops) ordained bishops who in turn have ordained bishops for all succeeding generations. A presbyter validly ordained by a validly ordained bishop is the only one who can validly preside at Eucharist. Is this understanding of apostolic succession overly literal? (Bishops’ "genealogies" – see http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org.) The Catholic Church recognizes that Eastern Orthodox churches have a valid episcopacy, valid priests, and therefore a valid sacrament of the Eucharist.

The efforts for unity among Christians are marked by a deep and indeed pained longing for gathering at one Eucharistic table. Our Church, in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, calls upon each of us to exercise our responsibility to be in dialogue with fellow Catholics and with other Christians.

We do recognize that there are situations in which non-Catholic Christians may find themselves drawn to receive the Eucharist. It is not the right or duty of any eucharistic minister to judge on what a person’s conscience is prompting him or her to do.

Withholding the Eucharist from Catholics: a bad idea. Rome told American bishops 100 years ago not to do this; they were contemplating withholding the Eucharist from parents whose children were in public schools.

Those who receive communion must not be in a state of serious sin. There is also a (minimal – one hour) Eucharistic fast.

Our practice of offering a Mass for a particular intention and having a monetary offering attached to the intention. The pastor’s duty to offer Mass "for the people of his parish/es" (pro populo).

Hungering in such a way as to long to feed the people in the Eucharist: priestly vocations. Who will come forward in our locality to feed the local People of God?

Let us appreciate our hunger for meaning and for what is good. Let us remember that, in the Holy Eucharist, we are united in the mystery of the crucified and risen Savior, and we are united with people all over the world who know what to be hungry for and who recognize the Eucharist to be the food that is proper to the project of eternal life.

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Subject: From the Times-Picayune
Time: 3:34:00 PM CDT
Author:  exsult1

Following is an editorial from the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.  It deserves a wide readership.

The Times-Picayune

OUR OPINIONS:
An open letter to the President

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and
said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good
reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It's accessible. The city
between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and
helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city's multiple points of entry, our nation's bureaucrats spent days after last week's
hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city's
stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in
and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a
caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a
dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick
Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday
morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid
were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how
our city was impossible to reach.

We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding
parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been          
were not. That's to the government's shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other           
alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don't know
what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city's
death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be
returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren't
they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges
threatened, that the Dome isn't suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national
officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air
conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn't have but two urgent
needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be
fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn't known until that day
that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He
gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We've provided food to
the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every
single day."

Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a
job."

That's unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact
that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We're no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn't be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

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Subject: Three liters a day
Time: 12:27:49 PM CDT
Author:  exsult1

I seem to be succeeding in developing a habit necessary for avoiding kidney stones: drinking at least three liters of water per day.  Also, I find myself asking "What's wrong with tap water?" and not coming up with an answer.

A few weeks back, I remarked to myself that the water in Auburn seemed to taste like dirt -- not that I eat dirt: it's just that the water tasted as I imagine dirt would taste like if I ate dirt.  Soon an article appeared in the Auburn Citizen: its essence was "local water tastes like dirt."

Last week I read an op-ed piece in The New York Times about bottled water.  It made the point that bottled water is not terribly different from tap water and often is tap water.  I have long felt that my habit of using half-liters of bottled water is rather frivolous.  Now I am convinced of it.

I am still using my hospital souvenir: a 32-ounce plastic thing with a handle and a lid and a permanent plastic straw.  I want more like it to put in all my work places, car, etc., but I am having trouble finding them.  I am using a couple of Rubbermaid "HydroGear" things, but I find it kind of barbaric in polite company to squeeze water into my mouth rather than sipping or drinking.  I am still on the lookout for handy accessories to make my habit all the easier to live out.

And for some reason, the lines of Sterling Hayden as Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove keep running through my mind:

"Mandrake, do you realize that seventy per cent of the earth's surface is water?  Do you realize that seventy per cent of you is water?  ... I cannot allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!  Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?  It's vodka they drink!  ... Have you heard of fluoridation of water?  ..." etc. etc.  Such thoughts could put one over the edge.  But I am proud and can say, along with Peter Sellers as Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, "I can assure you there's nothing wrong with my bodily fluids, Jackie boy!"

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Subject: Coming up for air
Time: 3:37:19 PM CDT
Author:  exsult1


I just want to let people know that I am still living and in circulation.  The surgery went fine.  I had eleven superb days at an "institute for interreligious leadership" at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein.  Right now I find that I am quite preoccupied with the details of my new responsibilities in running our tribunal, as well as with the beginning of a parish planning process which will result in changing my current parochial situation.  Oh yes, I read the new Harry Potter book last Saturday and Sunday.  It's a very good installment.  It is also very, very sad.

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Subject: Another blast
Time: 9:14:41 AM CDT
Author:  exsult1

Yesterday my lithotripsy went smoothly and this morning the "calcifications" made their appearance as grains of sand.  I'm back on the job, with a funeral Mass at 11 am and my regular weekend schedule.

Waiting around for surgery, I read the July 1 National Catholic Reporter, which carried a brief story on a site called godcast.org.  I haven't looked at the site, but anyone interested in doing religious podcasting should take a look.

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