What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

Tonight… I am out for a belated birthday supper with one of my best peeps.

Crispy fish!

My friend Mr. John L Allen, Jr., the nearly ubiquitous former Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and nearly the only reasonable writer for that ultra-lefty dissenting publication has an interesting open letter to President-Elect Obama.

It is worth your time to read.  My emphases and comments.

For the record, nobody from the Obama transition team has solicited my [John Allen is speaking] advice about relations with the Vatican, and I would frankly be surprised if the question were yet on their radar screen. Others, however, are already speculating about how things might shake out; on Wednesday, for example, Reuters moved a story predicting a “tricky” relationship between Rome and the Obama White House because of the abortion issue. As a thought exercise, I decided to pen an open letter to the president-elect about U.S.-Vatican ties over the next four years.

Mr. President-elect:

This letter is a plea to make U.S.-Vatican relations under your administration a priority, because of the enormous good in the world that could be accomplished by exploiting natural areas of common concern.

I’m aware that the stars may not seem especially well-aligned for such collaboration. A small number of Catholic bishops in the United States made statements during the campaign that favored your opponent, which may have left a bitter aftertaste among some of your supporters and advisors. It’s also clear to everyone that, barring a dramatic change of heart on your part, the White House and the Vatican will have deep differences during your term over “life issues” such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research.

I would urge you, however, not to allow those points to obscure four basic political realities.  [Mr. Allen often breaks things down into lists, which can be helpful in getting your head around issues.]

[1] First, the Vatican and the United States need each other, whatever their differences may be in a given historical moment. What the United States is in the realm of “hard power,” meaning coercive military and economic might, the Vatican is in terms of “soft power,” meaning the capacity to stir action on the basis of ideas. Religion is a powerful motivating force in human affairs, and the pope has the biggest bully pulpit of any religious leader. It’s simply bad for everyone if these two forces are not on good speaking terms.  ["hard power" and "soft power" ... interesting]

[2] Second, it’s smart politics for you not to neglect the Vatican. As you know better than anyone, in some ways your reelection campaign in 2012 has already begun. You won the Catholic vote overall this time, but narrowly lost white Catholics; working cooperatively and respectfully with the Vatican could help you and your party with that group.

[3] Third, the Vatican has a centuries-old diplomatic tradition of dealing with governments that, in one way or another, don’t follow the church’s line on certain matters. Despite those disagreements, Vatican diplomacy typically strives to keep lines of communication open and to seek common ground. In other words, they’ll want to do business with you where they can.

[4] Fourth, the Vatican is eager for good relations with the United States in particular, regardless of which party happens to be in power. The Vatican deeply admires the robust religiosity of America, in contrast with the pervasive secularism of much of Europe. The Vatican also believes that the United States is its most natural ally in promoting religious freedom and human dignity around the world.  [This is undoubtedly the case.]

The potential for collaboration is very real, because there are numerous areas where your policy positions dovetail with the social teaching of the Catholic church and the diplomatic interests of the Vatican. Among the most obvious examples are immigration, economic justice, peace, and environmental protection. In a statement this week congratulating you, Vatican spokesperson Fr. Federico Lombardi also expressed the Vatican’s desire to work together on Iraq, the Holy Land, Christian minorities in the Middle East and Asia, and the fight against poverty and social inequality.

In each area, you will find a clear track record of teaching from recent popes and a strong determination on the part of the Vatican’s diplomatic apparatus to move the ball. [These are concrete points which can be verified.] In fact, many of these topics represent areas in which the Vatican was at odds with the Bush administration and has longed for new American leadership.

Pope Benedict XVI himself has clearly opened the door to a positive working relationship.

The pope sent a telegram on Wednesday calling your election “a historic occasion,” and offering his prayer that God will “support you and the American people, so that through the good will of all, a world of peace, solidarity and justice can be built.” Lombardi likewise expressed hope that you “will be able to match the expectations and the hopes directed towards the new president, effectively serving justice and rights, finding the best ways to promote peace in the world, favoring the growth and dignity of persons with respect for essential human and spiritual values.”  [So… the Vatican has already extended a hand.  What will an Obama White House do?]

You’ll notice that neither the pope nor his spokesperson explicitly mentioned abortion or other areas of disagreement, and certainly their tone suggests that concern for the “life issues” will not exclude cooperation in other areas. On the contrary, the Vatican seems to be doing everything it can to invite it.

May I suggest one more possibility for U.S.-Vatican partnership? I believe there is a historic opportunity for your administration and the Holy See to work together to move the international community, at long last, toward serious engagement on behalf of peace and development in Africa.

You are a hero to much of Africa, giving you a degree of political capital on the continent that no other Western leader could rival. At the same time, 2009 is shaping up as a “Year of Africa” in global Catholicism. [Which many Catholics don’t know, much less American politicians.  Good for Allen for mentioning it.] Over the next 12 months, Pope Benedict XVI will visit Cameroon and Angola; the African bishops will hold their plenary assembly in Rome; and bishops from all over the world will converge on Rome for a “Synod for Africa.” All this suggests the possibility of synergy between the world’s most important political and spiritual leaders—i.e., you and the pope—to promote peace and development for Africa, where the world’s most impoverished and abandoned people are today found.

If you’re interested in forging such a partnership, the first important choice to make is who to send to the Vatican as your ambassador. Ideally, you will turn to someone known to have your ear, who will have real political influence in your administration, and who also knows the Catholic world. What you’re looking for, in other words, is a Democratic equivalent of James Nicholson, President Bush’s first Vatican ambassador. Nicholson had served as the chair of the Republican National Committee, and helped to steer the party’s outreach to Catholic voters. Bush sent a clear signal with that nomination that he was interested in the Vatican, and this is one case where it would behoove you to follow his lead.

Finally, one last piece of unsolicited advice: Mr. President-Elect, whatever else you do, please try to avoid repeating the mistakes of the last Democratic administration with regard to the Vatican.  [Read this next part closely.]

In his memoirs, former Vatican Ambassador Raymond Flynn tells a depressing story from 1994 illustrating what I mean. During the lead-up to the U.N. conference on population in Cairo in 1994, Pope John Paul II called Flynn to the Vatican on a Saturday morning to personally request a telephone conversation with President Clinton. Flynn relayed the request urgently to the White House that afternoon, and got no response. He called again on Sunday and on Monday, both times with no results. Frustrated, Flynn then got on a plane to Washington on Tuesday. He cooled his heels outside the president’s office that night and most of Wednesday. Finally, he was admitted to the White House’s pre-Cairo war room, where he was told by Assistant Secretary of State Timothy Wirth that “nobody is getting a chance to lobby the president on this one.” Dumbfounded, Flynn explained that the Bishop of Rome is not a lobbyist, and that it would be seen as a profound act of disrespect if the president wouldn’t even get on the phone. After almost a week, Clinton finally agreed to take the pope’s call.

The episode was symptomatic of a basic disinterest within the Clinton team about the Vatican, which at times shaded off into hostility. The result was that the U.S.-Vatican relationship during the Clinton years was more often defined by predictable differences than by imaginative areas of common purpose.  [Well expressed.]

For what it’s worth, Mr. President-Elect, my advice is to get on the phone if the pope calls. Better yet, initiate the conversation yourself. You might be surprised about where it goes.

Very well written thought exercise. 

I think it is worthwhile making this visible.

Very soon I will be doing things to the blog’s domain.

If you can’t access the blog at some point in the near future, keep trying.  It’ll be back soon. 

UPDATE 6 Nov 18:04 GMT

I initiated a change of registrar for the domain from the old company I once had, with so many disasters, with to a new and competent company.

The old company is so bad that when I put in my request for the unlocking codes, it took them over three days to reply.  I have the codes and it is full speed ahead.

Hopefully the transfer will be without interruption, since the servers won’t be changing.

UPDATE 7 NOV 11:21 GMT

I am working with the previous registrar and running into problems.  They are really dragging their feet, telling me that all sorts of things have to be done, that they are waiting for me to do things, that they can’t do anything… blah blah. 

I think I am being stonewalled.  So… there are problems.

This is starting to feel like B’rer Rabbit and the Tar Baby.

Just in case you didn’t notice… today is First Friday

I have found that my iTunes is updating my audio postings once more.

How the iTunes feed remains a mystery.

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Right now it is working for me.  iTunes picked up my last two PODCAzTs.

Is it working for you?

In the wake of the election and its results, I want to share a sermon given by His Excellency Most Rev. Robert Finn, Bishop of Kansas City, MO.

A preview:

The Freedom of Choice Act will mark the beginning of a great persecution against religious liberty, because it will require tax payer money to be used for abortions. You and I will be faced with this legal trial: whether we should pay our taxes making us participants in the slaughter of Innocents or be liable for jail and fines.

My emphases and comments.

Homily for the Eve of the Election
November 3, 2008 – St. Therese North Parish
Most Reverend Robert W. Finn
Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph

Judges 7:1-22
Revelation 11:19; 12: 1-6, 10.
Matthew 10: 26-33

Dear friends,

Over the next 24 hours, millions of Americans will go to the polls throughout our country to cast ballots for the leaders of our nation, state, and community. We will make decisions about amendments and propositions. This is a wonderful process and privilege of citizenship in a country that values the ideal of freedom.

But let us have no doubt about this: through this process we are more than participants in a democratic process. We are becoming participants in life and death. The candidates we choose do not arise merely on their own. We place them in office. [He shifts the ground.  Our actions have deeper implications than merely who takes office.]

Clearly, all these leaders are imperfect men and women like ourselves. They will make decisions day by day, and many of the circumstances of war and domestic work are not able to be known until they happen. Nonetheless, when they tell us specifically what they will do and we are therefore able to foresee some of the likely consequences ["when they tell us what they will do"... good point] of their leadership we share in the responsibility of their acts. In this sense an election is about even more than physical life and death. It is also about your eternal salvation and mine. [Our actions have implications for our salvation.  Remember… the purpose of life is ultimately not to build a worldly utopia.] This is the first reason to pray. Pray that we will take seriously – that every other voter will take seriously – the meaning of our choices. In a country where we have made choice an absolute, we must remember that underlying every choice is a value; that flowing from every choice is a consequence; that we must give an accounting to God for what we decide.

Our Lord instructs us in the Gospel we have heard, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.” The enormity of this election is founded, in part, on the radical determination of some who would lead our country deeper than ever before into the darkness of the culture of death. This is a path that would certainly mean the death of countless more innocent lives. As shepherd of this Diocese I am also deeply saddened by the prospect of the cost in people’s souls, [He takes the cura animarum seriously.] the souls of those who would place a candidate’s promise of economic prosperity above the life of the most innocent of our brothers and sisters.

Most perilous is the fate of those Catholics who, with hardened hearts, decide to create for themselves, and preach to others, a false gospel that the “right” to an abortion must not be challenged, or that the humanity of the child need not be protected.

Most fraudulent are those Catholic leaders, or alliances of Catholics, that insist that the radically evil injustice of abortion need not be directly opposed, but rather, that somehow solving the dilemma of the poor in a sweeping act of charity will cause the foundation of this monstrous crime to crumble.

Why is this so terribly amiss? Because the foundation and cause of abortion is not poverty but a blind disregard for personal responsibility, a heinous denial and disrespect for human life, and an idolatrous worship of personal convenience. This is why even in the wealthy countries of Scandinavia the highest rates of abortions are followed by rampant euthanasia.  [Wow… the liberals are going to hate this guy for a looong time.]

Friends, the poor do not hate their children any more or less than the rich. The poison of which abortion is the most dreadful manifestation is the sinful suffocation of selfishness, and it can and does affect all strata of society. Woe to those, particularly Catholics, who dare to try to convince us that their “choice” of a radically pro-abortion leader is within the parameters of conscience.  [A bishop who uses a phrase… with deadly seriousness… "Woe to those…"] God have mercy on those who exude freely this salve for their partisan cooperators. I fear that they will bear a greater responsibility than most. Against them will come not only the cry of millions of human lives savagely destroyed, but the souls of those they have sucked down with themselves. This is the very definition of scandal, and the reason that so many have spoken out with such urgency to announce the authentic teaching of the Church.

Part of the damage we have been promised is encapsulated in the Freedom of Choice Act, which has been held at bay the last eight years. When all the reasonable limits on abortion, gained in the last 35 years have been summarily swept away: parental notification, waiting periods, counseling and informed consent, the number of those killed will grow by more than 100,000 a year.

The Freedom of Choice Act will mark the beginning of a great persecution against religious liberty, ["a great persecution against religious liberty"] because it will require tax payer money to be used for abortions. You and I will be faced with this legal trial: whether we should pay our taxes making us participants in the slaughter of Innocents or be liable for jail and fines.

And what of our Catholic hospitals? If we are forced to provide such destructive services under the Freedom of Choice Act, we will have to refuse. Catholic health care workers, and other men and women of good conscience, will risk losing their jobs [It is going to become very real, folks.] when their conscience exception is lost and they are pressured to participate. I read a letter recently in our daily paper: The man said, “If you don’t want an abortion. Don’t have one.” Under a regime of such change, you and I will not have such an easy choice. By paying, it will become “our abortion.” Lord, have mercy on us, and on our country.

In the light of these clear and present dangers, [A "clear and present danger" for the Church and souls.] I chose tonight’s Gospel, in part, because four times it tells us, “Don’t be afraid!” Let us not be afraid, dear flock. You are worth so much to God; more than sparrows, more than an election, more than any man can measure. Our first goal is this: we must get through tomorrow with our eternal souls intact. We know that God will take care of the rest.

A week ago, I wrote our diocese a letter hoping that it would be heard by all as a necessary call to prayer. Many of our pastors read it to their people. Some, I am sure, suffered a bit from doing so. Thank you, dear brave priests.

I also know that it wasn’t heard by all. Let us not be too hard on those who, for fear or even disagreement, have shrunk back even from the call to pray! It takes time for us to learn to carry our burdens, our obedience, our responsibility. I want you all to pray that – at the hour of greatest need – none will step back from the sacrifice that makes us most like Jesus Christ.

In the first reading, God tells Gideon that He is going to win a great victory. So that Gideon and the People of Israel don’t get too big a head, God determines to go against the hundreds of thousands of the enemy with only three hundred men. He even proceeds to choose those who are perhaps the least sophisticated of all, “those who lap up their water like dogs.” God certainly doesn’t pull any punches!

St. Paul says something similar when he announces that God chooses those whom the world considers foolish to shame the wise. (1 Cor 1:27) Dear friends, there is hope for us! God can use us – few and unsophisticated as we are to win the victory of life. God can choose “the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something.” (1 Cor 1: 28)

I pray this reading from about Gideon’s lopsided battle will remind God and us of the kind of victory He can win for His people. May He grant us this same mercy these days, all in accord with His will and plan; all for the glory of His name; all for the protection of human life.

In the second reading we have the image of Mary, the Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and the crown of stars on her head. Mary, we cry out to you, O Mother of life, O Empress of America, O Star of the New Evangelization, O Immaculate patroness of our Diocese and our country: Gather us under the mantel of your maternal love. Mary, Lady of the Rosary whom we have invoked so often, particularly in the last month, “Pray for us sinners!” You, O Queen and our Mother, “despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us from all dangers, O ever-glorious and blessed Virgin.

Dear friends, over the next 24 hours, millions of Americans will go to the polls throughout our country to cast ballots for the leaders of our nation, state, and community. We are called to be participants in life and death. May God guide us to choose life. May He make us his fearless apostles, and use us to construct a civilization of life and love.

What the bishop said is certainly the case.   Those who will refuse to participate in the widening culture of death are going to be persecuted.  The vaunted freedom of religion enshrined in the Constitution will be shoved aside in favor of wicked policies.

Having moved this onto the field of religious liberty, I am moved to ask another question.

The Council’s teaching on religious liberty is a point of contention for the SSPX against the Holy See.  

But it is often a rather dreamy discussion, very theoretical.

We are going to have more experience of the practical implications soon.

Isn’t it time for our ranks to close?