'Social justice' rears its ugly head

I guess if you're Glenn Beck or one of his disciples, you'll look at this dispatch from India and wonder why these commie-pinko protesters weren't just shot in the street.

That's right, according to the Zenit news agency, the dreaded social-justice conspiracy has set its sights on subverting The Way Things Work in the world's second-largest country:

Numerous religious, including three bishops, were arrested for taking part in a demonstration near Chennai in defense of the rights of Christian and Muslim "untouchables."

The police detained hundreds of people on Friday including priests, nuns, Archbishop Malayappan Chinnappa of Madras and Mylapore, Archbishop Peter Fernando of Madurai, and bishop Anthonisamy Neethinathan of Chinglepet, UCANews reported.

Friday's manifestation was the culmination of a month-long demonstration in favor of the lowest social caste, known as the dalits or untouchables.

The objective was to make the population and the state authorities more aware of the marginalization suffered by members of this class of society.

Thousands of people participated in a march that spanned some 310 miles, beginning a month earlier in the southern city of Kanyakumari.

HELL, IF YOU'RE the crew-cutted one, you're probably wondering -- in between crying jags -- not only why the noble Indian authorities didn't shoot the Catholic bishops, but why they didn't drive a stake through their hearts as well.

It's tough being Glenn Beck. If only enough people could see . . . it's all so clear once you're actually inside the funhouse mirror.

The devil has a crew cut

It's no secret that Glenn Beck is a cynical buffoon whose stock-in-trade is scaring the crap out of people even more ignorant and crazy than himself.

It also is no secret that Beck's boss at the Fox News Channel, Roger Ailes -- as well as his bosses at Premiere Radio Networks -- just might be the most cynical people in America. That's saying something.

But cynically ginning up outrage and paranoia among ignorant (and perhaps unstable) people is nothing new in American politics and public discourse. Dangerous, yes. Destructive of the commonweal, yes.

But, alas, nothing new. This is the tired and hoary work of minor demons inhabiting middling rings of the inferno.

CONVINCING GULLIBLE and paranoid Yankee Doodle whack jobs that "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land" is pure, uncut communism -- evil incarnate under the guise of "social justice" . . . collectivist subversion of freedom and democracy -- that, on the other hand, is the work of Lucifer himself.

The devil is on Fox News weekday afternoons at 5 -- 4 Central. His stage name is Glenn Beck.

And the devil -- er, "Beck" -- is a master at getting mere mortals to mistake good for evil and evil for a public-policy prescription.

"Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied"? Socialist redistribution of wealth!

"Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied"? Commie-libs are out to destroy individual initiative . . . by confiscating your income!

"Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation"? Implicit threat of violence against hard-working American achievers from totalitarian agitators in the highest ranks!

Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep? If you remember your history, this sounds awfully like what Stalin did when he collectivized agriculture in the Ukraine! Communists want you to starve while they redistribute your food!

CALL IT biblical exegesis, as seen on Glenn Beck's TV. And heard on his radio.

Glenn Beck thinks that if you go to a church that believes that Jesus Christ meant what he said in the Beatitudes, you are in deep borscht, Comrade.

And Glenn Beck says red-blooded, market-oriented American lovers of freedom had better get out of any church that believes in that "social justice" crapola. No, really:

I recently received word through a new friend that The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good captured audio of Fox News’ Glenn Beck encouraging listeners to leave their church if it proclaims a concern for social justice on his March 2nd radio broadcast. Here’s the quote from Beck:

"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

NO, PEOPLE, this is no everyday, happens-every-couple-or-three-decades, run of the mill American political and cultural crackpottery.

What we have here is a crew-cut, whackadoodle Mormon-convert antichrist who has been given free reign by his radio and cable-TV masters to preach apostasy to millions of lost sheep. This isn't Christopher Hitchens going on TV to tell a bemused reporter that there is no God, and believers are full of beans.

Instead, this is one of the most popular hosts on the most popular cable-"news" channel, telling his viewers that Jesus preached evil, historical Christianity is a bunch of socialist agitprop and they should flee any church that believes in such things, because that church is a clear and present danger to the republic.

It's kind of like Lenin through the looking glass, actually.

A pretty neat trick, if you can pull it off. And we know just the malevolent entity for the job, don't we?

Mortification

Chicken-and-andouille gumbo. Good stuff.

Can't have it today. No meat, fasting.

Die to yourself, you gravy-sucking pig, the church tells us this Ash Wednesday. Or, put more artfully as we receive ashes on our foreheads today, "Remember, O man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

And hold the gumbo.

Help! Help! We're being repressed!

The Mass, it is a changin'.

And all the folks who were so enthusiastic about all the changes to the central prayer of the Catholic Church four decades ago -- and indifferent to how those changes rocked the world of ordinary folks in the pews -- suddenly have become liturgical populists.

Those who never heard a prayer of the church they couldn't change at will, for political correctness' or gender equity's sake, now worry that changing the order of the Roman Mass after a mere two years of "pre-teaching" will drive Catholics right out of the church and be a stumbling block to others who might have come in from the spiritual cold.

You can read about the leader of the resistance in The Seattle Times, or you can read his call to arms . . . er, call to wait? . . . er, declaration that Pope Benedict XVI and the American bishops are mean, mean men (and wholly undemocratic, too) in America magazine here.

BUT I WANT you to take something into account.

Folks who are convinced the bishops and Holy Father are being mean, shortsighted and authoritarian -- authoritarian, no less, in a hierarchical organization going back two millennia -- just because they're taking away familiar-but-faulty Mass language are applying the paradigm of consumerism to the paradigm of the sacred.

Consumerism has no problem with telling people all the lies their fallen nature wants to hear if that's what it takes to get them in the door and relieve them of all that cash taking up space in their wallets. What the Catholic Church is supposed to be about is something completely different. Like truth.

If the present English-language Novus Ordo (the "new order" of the Mass established by the Second Vatican Council) is further from the truth than the original Latin text of the supreme prayer of the Church, why wouldn't we want to fix it ASAP? The bottom line is that if a translation does not conform to the message intended in the original, then it -- no matter how damn popular and familiar -- is telling people something slightly off about the nature of the Mass, the nature of God and the nature of ourselves.

That is never a good thing -- particularly in a lie-dominated age such as ours.

GOD IS TRUTH. Jesus is the Word incarnate. Our supreme duty as Catholics -- and as human beings -- is to the truth. And the Truth.

"Spirit of Vatican II" people now say they're "hanging on by their fingernails" because the bishops made an executive decision -- based on scholarship and at the command of the Vicar of Christ -- about the one thing that's absolutely their responsibility and not ours? Well, I've been freakin' hanging on by my fingernails for a long time now because truth has become apocryphal in so much the Church does (and is) nowadays.

What's important now is the Almighty Dollar and getting asses in pews, so that they might offer up their Almighty Dollars. And it seems to me that ever since I've been Catholic (and for a couple of decades before that, at least) the main thing being sacrificed at the Mass is beauty, good taste and any sense that it's all about Jesus Christ crucified and risen -- as opposed to how incredibly neato keen all us white-bread suburban Catholics are.

I am sure that a lot of the people upset about the coming rejiggering of the Mass -- truly -- are holier, better people that I. Even so, they're not going to get to Heaven on their own. And what has come to pass for contemporary Catholicism ain't helping matters.

IF YOU ASK ME, everything from The Scandals to the extreme solipsism effectively encouraged among the laity is of one piece, indicating that we all hold something very, very dear . . . and that it ain't Jesus Christ. Or even our suffering brothers and sisters (see Curtiss, Elden and his Big Ass $380,000 Retired Archbishop Bachelor Pad right here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska).

I was raised entirely unchurched by People With Issues . . . chief among them that they didn't like people. My mother was raised by people who were desperately poor and found it more important to Not Be Embarrassed Further than to make sure their raggedy kids were confirmed and churched (or, for that matter, even educated).

I did not come to the Catholic Church at age 29 to be entertained or coddled. Frankly, I can entertain myself far better on Sundays than by sitting through Marty Haugen's Greatest Hits (a.k.a. Short Bus Dinner Theater) and listening to middle-aged women frantically trying to not use third-person masculine pronouns while reciting the prayers of the church. (Well, actually, that is kind of entertaining, but I digress.)

I came to the Catholic Church at age 29 because I had come to the end of myself, and it seemed a reasonable alternative to blowing my brains out . . . which itself would have been a reasonable alternative to becoming My Parents v 2.0. I came to the Catholic Church because of an aunt and uncle who managed not to fall away despite everything, because I sensed that, in some way, Catholicism was a part of who I was despite my upbringing in a church-free, pagan version of Southern Presbyterianism.

I came to the Catholic Church because it had stood since Jesus founded it, because what I needed was unvarnished truth, and because I figured that if any church would tell me straight up what the deal was -- even though it might be the last thing I wanted to hear -- that would be the one.

Twenty years later, I put up with feckless bishops, raging ecclesiastical identity crises, white-bread suburban religiosity that will tolerate letting Jesus out of the tabernacle for just about an hour a week (but no more) because I still think that's true. That's why *I'm* hanging on by *my* fingernails.

I'M HANGING ON by my fingernails because I'm a lousy, rotten, sinful son of a bitch prone to making a damned mess of things. I'm hanging on by my fingernails because I know I have nowhere else to go, and that if I do go, that's pretty much it for me.

And every time the church chooses expedience over truth, the closer I draw -- the closer we all draw -- to the abyss.

Flannery O'Connor once told a friend that if the Eucharist were just a symbol and not the true Body and Blood of Christ "then to hell with it." I am an O'Connor Catholic. And if the Mass -- the prayer of the universal church -- is just, in effect, a marketing ploy existing to attract converts and placate the regulars, then to hell with it.

Amen.

Omaha . . . I am your archbishop

The Diocese of Springfield, Ill., where the Vatican went to find Omaha's next archbishop, was a MESS when Bishop George Lucas got there, and he's spent a decade trying to clean it up.

Lucas will find his next see to be merely a mess, with the most pressing problem being that vocations to the priesthood here have dried up -- the Archdiocese of Omaha will ordain no new priests this year and none next year, either.

Other than that, the new prelate will face a bunch of run-of-the-mill millennial Catholic crises . . . lousy religious education for the church's youth, not enough priests to do the job, the ongoing ecclesiastical Fifth Column that is Catholic secondary and higher education, etcetera and so on.

HERE'S A BIT from this afternoon's story in the Omaha World-Herald:

In his prepared remarks, Lucas said he is humbled to be given the responsibility of leading the 220,000-member Omaha Archdiocese.

"I look forward to learning about all the ways the Gospel is preached and lived in the Archdiocese of Omaha," he said. "I have a great deal to learn and you all have much to teach me."

Lucas showed he had done his homework by prominently mentioning Catholic schools, a focus in the family and social lives of many Omahans. He said even a casual observer would be impressed by Catholic education here.

"I look forward to not being a casual observer, but an active participant in this endeavor," he said.

To priests, Lucas said, "Not only will I depend on you to teach me, I will depend on you to support me, as I support you."

To non-Catholics, Lucas said he had been very active in inter-faith work in Illinois and plans to continue that in Omaha.

Lucas, 59, was named today by Pope Benedict XVI as the replacement for retiring Omaha Archbishop Elden F. Curtiss, who had submitted his mandatory resignation when he turned 75 two years ago this month.

(snip)

Pope John Paul II appointed Lucas bishop of Springfield in October 1999. He was installed Dec. 14, 1999.

The Springfield diocese is home to about 170,000 Catholics in 164 parishes, according to the diocesan Web site.

The diocese, in south-central Illinois, is served by 99 active diocesan priests and 62 religious order priests. The diocese also has eight Catholic hospitals, a religious seminary, a Catholic university, a Catholic college, seven Catholic high schools and 54 Catholic elementary schools.

Lucas comes to Omaha under much different circumstances than when he went to Illinois in 1999. A sex-abuse scandal involving the former Springfield bishop, Daniel Ryan, was brewing in Springfield at the time. It eventually erupted into greater scandal and lawsuits along with the national clergy sex-abuse crisis.

In an interview today, Lucas said the diocese had taken the steps it needed to take to protect children, to be transparent and to ensure that the diocese was operating with integrity.

That said, he added, "The hurt of the abuse is still felt very deeply by those who were abused."

BUT AT LEAST he won't -- at this writing at least -- have to deal with allegations his predecessor had a taste for underage boys or deal with a diocesan chancellor who gets beaten up in city parks by teens who take umbrage at being propositioned for sex.

If he's lucky, he won't have to call in an outside investigator here in the next five years, and he won't have the Omaha equivalent of the radically traditionalist, bomb-throwing Roman Catholic Faithful accusing him of a hands-off policy toward "predatory homosexuals." That and of having a taste for high-school boys himself.

The Decatur (Ill.) Herald & Review reported on the whole mess in August 2006:

Lucas called for an investigation of alleged clergy misconduct "amid a climate of increasing doubt and mistrust" in February 2005, the report stated.

The probe was spearheaded by Springfield attorney Bill Roberts, a Methodist.

The investigation found "some misuse of power and some serious misconduct" by a "very small number of priests," Lucas said.

Lucas remains confident in the virtuous service of the vast majority of the more than 120 priests in the diocese. He acknowledged the "painful truth" of revelations and hopes the investigation will restore the confidence of parishioners.

"I'm deeply sorry for the misdeeds of any priest whom I have placed in or allowed to remain in a position of trust in this diocese," Lucas said.

The report stated that former Bishop Daniel Ryan engaged in sexual misconduct with adults and used his authority to conceal his actions.

"Although denied by Bishop Ryan, this behavior did occur and caused scandal in the church by leading others to do evil," the report stated. "It resulted in feelings of hurt and anger, as well as thoughts of doubt and mistrust, both in the church as an institution and in its leaders."

The report documents anecdotal evidence of Roman Catholics abandoning the faith because of Ryan's actions.

"The investigation found a culture of secrecy fostered under Bishop Ryan's leadership which discouraged faithful priests from coming forward with information about misconduct," the report added.

Ryan no longer participates in public ministry and does not live in the diocese, the report stated.

"We saw a culture that had grown very permissive, very lax, a culture lacking discipline, a culture in which at some point the people became distrusting and wary of bringing things to the head of their church in this diocese because they believe that it wouldn't be handled appropriately," Roberts said.

Some believe Lucas rewarded priests who protected Ryan by honoring them with the designation "monsignor," the report noted. The probe found no evidence Lucas was aware of alleged misconduct by honorees but found Lucas could have researched some priests' characters more carefully.

The panel found false and without merit the allegations by area resident Thomas Munoz, who claimed to have engaged in sex acts with Lucas, five priests and three seminarians. Munoz failed a polygraph test and has a history of criminal and deceptive behavior, the report stated.

IT'S NOT EASY being an archbishop. But it's got to be easier than being bishop of Springfield, Ill.

At least once the Star Wars jokes get old.

The point of hilarity

St. Thomas Aquinas counseled us to "drink to the point of hilarity."

This evening, for me, that would be one shot of Early Times. Because I hardly can contain my "hilarity" looking at this, sober as a judge. Oh, Lord have mercy!

This is so rich!

What's sad is that any serious Catholic gives a flying intercourse what Rush Limbaugh has to say about l'affaire Obama at Notre Dame. I'll worry about that, however, after a bit of hilarity.

Now do you get the picture?

You might be wondering where I'm coming from on this Notre Dame brouhaha over Barack Obama's commencement address and honorary degree.

I certainly was blunt in that last post, but perhaps I could be more clear about why I have no patience for bishops like Thomas Olmsted deciding to double security at the stable after all the horses have fled. Perhaps I can explain myself this way:

I live in the Archdiocese of Omaha. From what I can tell, it's a pretty typical Catholic diocese -- not completely whackadoodle, not completely dyspeptic and suffering from a more-or-less average degree of maladministration.

If you attend Mass at your average Catholic parish, you're likely to hear at least as much (and maybe more) about this

. . . as you will about this.

Then again, the archdiocese can't function without our

I mean, without money, how could the chancery spend $389,000 to purchase this

. . . so this man

. . . can live happily ever after in comfortable retirement digs?

Of course, when things turn political and there's (!!!!!) a sudden, grave threat to the traditional family, traditional morality and natural law, you'll see the state bishops' conference make a little noise about this

. . . but you'll never, ever see the bishop draw the line -- even in the most charitable, pastoral manner -- here

The star of Jurassic Queen ("Mature Audiences Only 18+"), by the way, is the choir director at Omaha's Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

Needless to say, if one thinks about all this in light of the gospel -- or even in terms of basic decency and justice -- you could find yourself in a situation something like this

. . . or certainly like this

So, in times like these, is it any wonder so many Catholics, for so many reasons, just end up heading for this?

Oh. Puh. Leeze.

The Catholic Church's man in Phoenix -- having eluded the city's rampant drug-cartel shanghaiing specialists -- is keeping a laserlike focus on the things that matter in life.

Like ripping Notre Dame's president a new one for giving America's president an honorary degree.

And it seems the cardinal sin here isn't that the Rev. John Jenkins is making nice with one of the more enthusiastic boosters of Abortion Nation. It seems that the cardinal sin here is this:

"It is a public act of disobedience to the Bishops of the United States."

WELL . . . we can't have that now, can we?

Don't get me wrong. What Notre Dame is doing . . . not a good idea. It does muddy the Catholic Church's clear teaching about the value of every human life and the unequivocal need to protect and honor every single one of them.

And it calls into question whether we're serious about what we say we believe. Like, maybe we just like to talk nice about what we -- wink -- "believe."

On the other hand, life is full of "teachable moments," and it seems to me the Catholic Church in this country could care less about carpe-ing the diem. That's Latin, your excellencies -- a dead language you ought to know a little about.

I'd like to see the American church attuned to making the most of all kinds of "teachable moments," particularly when they involve the President of the United States. Then again, I'd like to have a bazillion dollars and a ginormous checkbook, too.

One's about as likely as the other.

THAT'S BECAUSE if the Catholic Church can't even convince a single, solitary Kennedy to act -- and cast congressional votes -- like a Catholic, I don't know what it could do with poor old Barack Obama, over whom it has no authority.

I dunno, perhaps Father Jenkins unwittingly is providing a teachable moment to the American bishops. And that moment says "You're a joke. You are turning Christ's church in America into a joke. You are unserious, and the church you lead is becoming unserious as well."

For 14 years, I had a pretty good chance to closely observe Catholic teen-agers, of both the public-school and parochial-school stripes. For almost 20 years, I've been a part of suburban Catholic parish life.

And I wasted several professional years being overworked and underpaid in Catholic media. That experience nearly destroyed my faith, but that's not important now.

What's important is that I've been able to directly observe just how fat, self-satisfied, lazy and corrupt is the Catholic Church in this country. What's important is that I've learned it's no mere glib exaggeration when people say one of the best places to lose your Catholic faith is in a Catholic school.

What's important is the realization that if the Catholic bishops were at all worried about teaching -- especially Catholics . . . especially the young -- the gospel of Jesus Christ might have a fighting chance in this culture.

As it stands now, not so much.

FRANKLY, your excellencies, if you have nothing so say apart from whining about how you've been disrespected, kindly shut the hell up. I would have a lot more respect for you if you had the faith of a deranged street person standing at 72nd and Dodge with a sandwich board reading "REPENT! THE END IS NEAR!"

Back in the day, the crazy street preacher would have been John the Baptist. Perhaps you've heard of him.

Come to think of it, one way or another, all our ends are near. Perhaps even that of the church in America . . . just like all those vanished churches the apostle Paul once wrote to.

And gentlemen, you're not exactly apostle Paul material.

3 Chords & the Truth: Will podcast for food

Because we couldn't afford Cloud 9.

It's brutal out there. And the economy is even worse.

I guess you've figured out -- and, boy, are you sharp! -- that we're taking a musical look at the signs of the times this week on 3 Chords & the Truth. Of course, the music will be great (that's a given, he says modestly), but whether your response to it is to enjoy the aesthetics or to howl in rage at the shape we're in . . . well, that's entirely your own choice.

ME, I GO back and forth between wanting to raise the red flag and get revolutionary on Wall Street's arse . . . and thinking, "What you gonna do?" while trying to make the best of what's going to be some hard, hard times.

Perhaps there's room for a little of both responses, you know? But, ultimately, we all do have to make the best of it, no matter what "it" might be. Like the ubiquitous "they" say, the flip side of crisis is opportunity.

Perhaps, like Tony Bennett sings about on the Big Show this week, we're all being called to live "the simple life" . . . because it's good for us. There's something absolutely biblical (in the good sense, not the "of biblical proportions" sense) about that notion.

MAYBE THAT'S the question we're ultimately exploring on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth. Not just "How do we get through this colossal mess?" but, indeed, "What is life?"

A lot of baggage for one weekly music show, eh? That's why the blog is here -- on a music show, you need to have time for the, er . . . music. That we do.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. It's just like radio -- except for it doesn't suck.

Be there. Aloha.

Dealing with grace: It's not brain surgery

Erstwhile New Orleans church-occupier Poppy Z. Brite at least recognizes grace when she sees it. Apparently, she found some at Our Lady of Good Counsel -- the church whose closure she protested.

Unfortunately, what the goth writer fails to apprehend is kind of crucial to this whole saving grace thing.

ONE, she seems not to understand that graces flow from the Almighty, not a parish community. Two, Ms. Brite -- repeating an omission common to moderns who can't understand why Adam and Eve got in such deep s*** for noshing on that damned apple -- doesn't quite get that grace requires a response. She makes this manifestly plain in her blog:

And to be honest, by Catholic standards, there are some legitimate criticisms in those "mean comments." All I can say is that I have never claimed to be a good Catholic. I find succor in the celebration of the Mass and the sharing of the Eucharist, not in dogma. I am a cafeteria Catholic of the exact kind that drives strict Catholics up the wall. I'm pro-choice, which automatically excludes me from some definitions of Catholicism. I'm unapologetically queer. I think the current Pope is an asshole. Hell, I even love Life of Brian. My pastor and my parish family are Christian enough to accept me anyway. I find it sad that so many so-called "Christians" are not. I'm sorry if my becoming Catholic hurts them in some way. I didn't do it to hurt anybody. We are all flawed people at OLGC. I wish these wonderful anonymous Catholics would send me the names of their churches full of perfect people so I could go and bask in their perfection.

However, while I know I am deeply flawed, I cannot believe that trying to help protect my church and my Church from bad leadership is wrong.

I'm not a good Catholic, but I am a seeking one, and if I hadn't had this particular church to turn to when I did, I might well be dead now. Very likely some of these types would consider that preferable to my filthy self sullying "their" precious Church, but they can put it on their T.S. list and send it to the archbishop.

NEWS FLASH: We're all pretty bad Catholics. Many of us hope someday to be mediocre -- kind of like Louisiana's perpetual quest to reach the elusive "Southern average" in various education benchmarks.

Likewise, many of us are just about as likely to reach that holy grail.

And when we have breathed our last and find our immortal souls standing before the Judgment Seat, we will throw ourselves on the mercy of the divine court -- "Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

Call that a D-minus response to grace. But at least a D-minus is better than the Big Flunk.

The Big Flunk would be something like . . .

I am a cafeteria Catholic of the exact kind that drives strict Catholics up the wall. I'm pro-choice, which automatically excludes me from some definitions of Catholicism. I'm unapologetically queer. I think the current Pope is an asshole. Hell, I even love Life of Brian. My pastor and my parish family are Christian enough to accept me anyway. I find it sad that so many so-called "Christians" are not.

I USED TO BE a copy editor. I think I can tighten this up some:

"Hey, God! I think you should be Christian enough to endorse my flouting all your retrograde, bigoted and medieval bulls***. I ate that apple . . . and I liked it! I'm manifestly OK the way I am, and you ought to be damned glad to have me in Heaven."

OR . . . HOW ABOUT THIS, to steal a line or two from Groundhog Day?

Phil: I'm a god.
Rita: You're a god?
Phil: I'm a god, not the God . . . I don't think.

AND THAT SUMS UP the whole problem of Poppy Z. Brite, Bad Catholic. Her and all those other "cafeteria Catholics" who seem to think Jesus Christ, the pope and the whole friggin' church need kiss dissenters' asses just because they're too attached to their sins to embark on a spiritual 12-step program.

Come to think of it, Bill Murray as Phil the Weatherman exhibited somewhat more humility. He didn't think he was the God.

Jesus accepted all. That is not the same as affirming everybody's basic OK-ness.

22
You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.
23
When they persecute you in one town, flee to another. Amen, I say to you, you will not finish the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
24
No disciple is above his teacher, no slave above his master.
25
It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, for the slave that he become like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those of his household!
26
"Therefore do not be afraid of them. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known.
27
What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.
28
And 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 soul and body in Gehenna.
29
Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge.
30
Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
31
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
32
Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.
33
But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.
34
"Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.
35
For I have come to set a man 'against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
36
and one's enemies will be those of his household.'
37
"Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
38
and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.
39
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
40
"Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.

(Matthew 10:22-40)

GRACE, AND ACCEPTANCE, was when Jesus revealed Himself as the Messiah to the Samaritan woman in John, Chapter 4. It was scandalous enough that Jesus was talking to a woman not related to Him. Worse yet, He was a good Jew hobnobbing with a Samaritan woman.

And even more horrific that all of that, this woman got around. A lot.

But what was more important than some powerful grace was the Samaritan woman's powerful response to that grace. That response was not "So what if I've had five husbands and now I'm shacking up with somebody? Bless my sexuality, Lord."

THE SAMARITAN WOMAN'S response was to become the early church's greatest evangelist after the apostle Paul. In the Orthodox faith and in Eastern Catholic churches, she is known as St. Photini.

You can read about her here. Hint: Photini did not call her bishop "dickless" or Peter an "asshole."

Peace, mother#*$&@%!

It used to be that the song written by Nick Lowe and popularized by Elvis Costello was a pretty straightforward proposition.

After all, what is so damn funny about peace, love and understanding?

IT TAKES SOMEONE with a name like Poppy Z. Brite to show us how hilariously ironic a proposition it can be when the loudest -- and most self-proclaimedly persecuted -- apostles of "peace, love and understanding" display the capacity for tolerance and understanding you'd might expect of your local imperial wizard. (See post below.)

Then again, this is New Orleans we're talking about, the only place I know of where "F*** you, you f***ing f***s" can be turned into a movement.

Prada Bitch 1, Poppy Z. Brite 0

New Orleans writer and church-closing protester Poppy Z. Brite explained on Christmas Eve why she remains a Catholic, despite her . . . differences with church leadership and doctrine.

But if we all leave, then the assholes will have uncontested ownership of a potentially beautiful and valuable institution, and if we Catholics who don't believe this garbage put up with it, then hate will remain part and parcel of Catholic doctrine.

HER PAEAN to peace, love and understanding was entitled "Bite my fat one, Prada bitch." In case the reader might be unclear about the identity of the "Prada bitch," she included a graphic explaining, in graphic terms, what "Nazi popes" could do.

Furthermore, Ms. Brite -- who has said "I think of myself as male, and that I am attracted to males" -- was quite upset over Pope Benedict XVI's recent statement about gender, which supported what Judeo-Christian tradition has held about such things since, oh . . . forever. This all ties in somehow with why Poppy had been helping to "occupy" an Uptown parish the Archdiocese of New Orleans had seen fit to shutter.

"In case you've ever wondered why I don't just go to some other church," she wrote, "no one at Our Lady of Good Counsel thinks I'm going to destroy the human race."

As one who has written my own archbishop suggesting -- amid the scandals and a petulant tantrum he threw regarding governance of Boys' Town -- that he start acting like a shepherd or please resign, I sympathize on some level with those who are unwilling to scrape and bow before the majesty of the chancery.

On the other hand, who the *&@! does she think she is?

By definition, Catholics "believe this garbage." When she was confirmed as an adult -- as did I when I was confirmed as an adult -- Poppy Z. Brite made this profession:

“I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches,
and proclaims to be revealed by God.”

NOTHING THERE about "Catholics who don't believe this garbage." So forgive me if I don't have much sympathy for Ms. Brite's and her fellow at Our Lady of Good Counsel protesters' bleating about the archdiocese, etcetera and so on, acting in bad faith.

Like this from the Times-Picayune:

Tuesday's action appears to end parishioners' long attempt to save their parishes, an effort that began in April, when [Archbishop Alfred] Hughes announced they would be closed as part of a massive restructuring of post-Hurricane Katrina worship life in the archdiocese.

Parishioners seized their churches after their last scheduled Masses in late October. Since then, they have occupied them in shifts around the clock, holding priestless Sunday prayer services and, they said, steadily building support for their volunteer rosters.

As Comiskey arrived at Good Counsel, one person from the crowd asked loudly about an earlier statement from archdiocesean officials that those participating in the vigil would not be disturbed as long as they remained peaceful. She didn't immediately respond.

As police prepared to remove Baquet, others close to Baquet, including his attorney, Lee Madere, were furious that police would not allow them access to Baquet to make sure he had medicine he needs as part of his treatment for cancer.

"You ain't never eating at Lil' Dizzy's again," Madere, standing at a church door, told a police officer, referring to the Esplanade Avenue restaurant run by relatives of Baquet.

Shortly after police arrived at St. Henry, one distraught parishioner, Cynthia Robidoux, rushed to the locked door tearfully demanding entry.

Robidoux told Assistant City Attorney Nolan Lambert she wanted to swap herself for the three parishioners inside to spare them arrest. Moreover, she told Lambert and police, she said she wanted to be arrested herself.

"I want everyone to see what they're doing. I want them to be ashamed," she said, referring to Hughes and other church officials.

I LOVE IT when folks, on one hand, portray church officials as disciples of "hate" then, on the other, get all snitty when they perceive them as not acting "Christian." Isn't that exactly what they expected of "assholes"?

These eminently rational folk admittedly "don't believe this garbage" themselves, think the Holy Father is "Nazi" who needs to "f*** off" and only remain in the Catholic Church because they don't want the "assholes" to have "uncontested ownership" of it as they, the brave revolutionaries, seek to change unchangeable doctrine.

Translation: We're Fifth Columnists who want to remake the church in our image, but we need to hang on to the petty cash and copy machines to accomplish it.

What's not to love?

MAYBE NOT EVERY protester at Our Lady of Good Counsel is as obnoxiously obnoxious as Poppy Z. Brite. Maybe not all of them want the pope to "f*** off." Maybe not all of them want the church to accommodate the sexual vagueness of a gay man trapped in a woman's body who in 1988 said he/she/???, at one point, "grew depressed because I couldn't go out at night and f*** greased-boy ass in some back room."

If so, whose "Brite" idea was it to let Poppy speak in their names? Get in front of the TV cameras? Be a ringleader of the church occupiers.

At any rate, all charges were dropped Wednesday. The "assholes" were merciful, it would appear. That, or not keen to feed the protesters' need for spectacle.

Damn pity. I would have liked to see how Catholic New Orleans would have reacted to "NAZI POPES F*** OFF."

Revisiting Revolution 21's premise

Every now and again, I like to revisit what Revolution 21 is all about -- if for no other reason than to remind myself.

SO, here we go:

Let's get something straight right now, O huddled masses: Revolution 21 ain't your grandma's media provider. It ain't your typical Catholic radio thing, and it ain't your typical corporate, over-researched, same-boring-playlist rock radio thing, either.

But is it really useful to define Revolution 21 by what it's not? So sorry, my plebes! My bad.

Let's just say -- plainly -- what Revolution 21 is. Revolution 21 is a website and music program that aim to reflect life as it is lived by screwed-up, struggling, inspired-yet-bumbling children of God sorely in need of His grace and forgiveness.

Revolution 21 -- that is, the Blog for the People and 3 Chords & the Truth -- realizes that Catholics like the Mighty Favog (your host and the master of dysfunctionality) live life with one foot in Heaven and the other in the gutter with all the other schmucks called Humanity. We strive for holiness, we occasionally achieve it, and sometimes the best we can muster is Holier Than Thou.

Oh, well. Blame it on Eve and that damned apple.

For his part, the Mighty Favog -- though a great and mighty Favog -- is a Bad Catholic. It is to be hoped, however, that he is capable of decent "radio" . . . and a stellar show.

And he's trying most mightily to become, at the least, a Mediocre Catholic.

So, like us believing schmucks, Revolution 21 -- all of it, text and audio -- is a mixture of the sacred and the secular. The serious and the foolish. Rock . . . and roll. Well, you get the idea.

But Revolution 21 has a problem with our oversecularized, materialist and ultimately shallow culture. We figure schizo is the only thing you get out of putting faith waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in one corner of your life and "real life" waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in another corner so the two never touch.

We say put that Faith Thing and that Life Thing in a bag, shake it the hell up and see what happens.

I mean, ain't that a lot more fun than alienation, ennui and life in Schizo City? Or, if not always fun, at least always a lot more interesting and, ultimately, rewarding.

But then again, it's not All About Me -- or All About You -- is it, now?

Enough blather, proclaims the Mighty Favog, your master of New Media!

Let us now proceed with trashing preconceived notions of radio formatting and stale bourgeois convention. Let us now do radio and blogging and . . . whatever . . . like we ought to be living -- faith and life together, recognizing only two kinds of music. That would be Good and Bad.

The bad, we don't mess with.

WELL, THAT'S pretty much the foundational vision of what this enterprise is about -- trying to come up with a new model of being a person of faith, of being a Catholic, in media.

Catholic media shouldn't have to be all about preaching and, frankly, staying in the Catholic ghetto. It should be about more than non-stop apologetics and, sad to say, some really bad "contemporary" music.

Of course, there needs to be a place for all that -- well, except for the bad music -- in Catholic radio, webcasting and podcasting. But there needs to be more. The Catholic media message, especially at this time in history, needs to be multidimensional.

There needs to be a cultural-support system for faith . . . and a space where Catholics can be intelligent, fun, culturally attuned beings while paying mind to the Permanent Things. If you listen to Catholic radio at all, for instance, you know that just isn't happening there.

IF ANYTHING, you start to wonder how such a church ever could have produced a Flannery O'Connor or a Walker Percy. Hang on a sec. Walker Percy was a convert.

You also start to wonder why most of the musicians and authors whose work you consider to be the most "Catholic" have achieved that while walking out the door of the church. You know, the whole "I was raised Catholic" thing.

You wonder whatever happened to whatever in Catholicism produced so much of the Renaissance. Whatever kept so much of Western culture alive during the Dark Ages.

I mean, how in the hell did we get from there to a culturally retarded institution which oftentimes has nothing better to offer the Almighty than the liturgical equivalent of this:


SO, HOW DOES ONE expect to get anywhere with something like, for example, 3 Chords & the Truth in this milieu?

You don't.

As the general manager of a Catholic radio station once told me about an effort far less "out there" (at least from a religious-radio perspective) than 3 Chords & the Truth, "Catholic radio's not ready for that." That, of course, begs the question, "When the hell will it be, then?"

Not now. Not when Catholic culture -- and let's face it, Christian culture in this country -- isn't any smarter than what it's supposed to be transcending.

So, what I think I need to face up to is that what I'm doing has no prospect of success within "the church." I don't know that I'd change a word of the above "mission statement" (for lack of a better term), but I know I can't force proselytizing or overt evangelizing into what is more properly the realm of culture and art.

Music -- art -- is more than just a tool for chalking up souls. It's more than the ol' evangelization bait and switch. And most importantly, it's not being true to the fullness of who I am or what I'm trying to accomplish here . . . whatever that might ultimately be.

WHAT I'M DOING, I guess, is "Catholic media" in the sense that it's media done by a guy trying to be a faithful Catholic. Just don't expect that it's "Catholic media" in the sense of being a shill for the institutional church, or merely a utilitarian "hook" for convincing you to be Catholic or to do as I say God says.

You are welcome here even if you think I'm full of it, and that that goes double for my religion.

If there's anything wrong in my foundational vision, it's that it is too formal -- as informal as it is, relatively speaking. The institutional church, for all I know, probably would be actively hostile to what I'm doing . . . at least if its name had to be on it. And I damn well know most Catholics just don't "get it."

Our church is a timid church.
It fears how some things might look.
There is no room for this.
Our church is a timid church.

SOME OF YOU will know the tune to put to that. Expect 3 Chords & the Truth to change accordingly, starting this week.

Ask not whether Obama goes to church

I call bulls*** on The New Republic's John B. Judis:

Am I the only person who is really irritated by these unctuous reports from the Politico that President-Elect Barack Obama is not attending church on Sunday? Here is an excerpt from reporter Ben Smith’s dumb story:

As my colleagues Jonathan Martin and Carol Lee noted last week, Barack Obama -- despite undergoing a campaign maelstrom over his pastor -- isn't a regular churchgoer. He didn't often attend Sunday services on the trail, and--unlike Presidents-elect Bush and Clinton--hadn't been since his election.

This is the kind of reporting one would expect from the Christian Broadcast Network, whose editors and reporters presumably view less than weekly religious observance as an offense against God, and as a sign of moral depravity in a public official, but why is this presumably secular publication making such a big deal about it? I regard as an invasion of Obama’s privacy.

JOHN B. JUDIS, it is apparent, guards Barack Obama's privacy much more jealously than does the president-elect himself. I wonder what he would say about a press corps that treated President Bush with such extreme deference?

Obama, for one thing, made his own Christianity a campaign draw in his efforts to court both the religious left and elements of the religious right. Pictured above -- and here -- is a campaign flier from the South Carolina Democratic primary last winter.

Did Obama invade his own privacy? Was that entire aspect of the Obama '08 campaign something "one would expect from the Christian Broadcast Network [sic]"?

Did Obama's Christianity cease to be in the public domain once America cast its ballots Nov. 4?

Has George W. Bush's privacy been violated when commentators of a certain stripe blame his Christianity for every boneheaded thing he's ever done as president? Has Bush's privacy been violated by all the armchair psychoanalysis of how his Christian faith has intersected with public policy?

Indeed, was the Washington press corps way out of bounds when reporters noted Ronald Reagan rarely attended services?

IT IS TOO MUCH to expect perfect objectivity from any journalist -- mainly because such a thing doesn't exist. It is ridiculous to expect such within The New Republic's realm of "viewpoint journalism."

But is it too much to expect a little reportorial legwork . . . and a little intellectual honesty as well?

For example, let's look at the July 12 edition of Newsweek:

The cross under which Obama went to Jesus was at the controversial Trinity United Church of Christ. It was a good fit. "That community of faith suited me," Obama says. For one thing, Trinity insisted on social activism as a part of Christian life. It was also a family place. Members refer to the sections in the massive sanctuary as neighborhoods; churchgoers go to the same neighborhood each Sunday and they get to know the people who sit near them. They know when someone's sick or got a promotion at work. Jeremiah Wright, whom Obama met in the context of organizing, became a friend; after he married, Obama says, the two men would sometimes get together "after church to have chicken with the family—and we would have talked stories about our families." In his preaching, Wright often emphasized the importance of family, of staying married and taking good care of children. (Obama's recent Father's Day speech, in which he said that "responsibility does not end at conception," was not cribbed from Wright—but the premise could have been.) At the point of his decision to accept Christ, Obama says, "what was intellectual and what was emotional joined, and the belief in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins, that through him we could achieve eternal life—but also that, through good works we could find order and meaning here on Earth and transcend our limits and our flaws and our foibles—I found that powerful."

Maya says their mother would not have made the same choice—but that Ann understood and approved of Obama's decision: "She didn't feel the same need, because for her, she felt like we can still be good to one another and serve, but we don't have to choose. She was, of course, always a wanderer, and I think he was more inclined to be rooted and make the choice to set down his commitments more firmly."

After his stint as an organizer, Obama went to Harvard Law School. He didn't officially join Trinity until several years later, when he returned to Chicago as a promising young lawyer intent on becoming a husband, a father and a professional success. Around the time Obama was baptized, he says he studied the Bible with gifted teachers who would "gently poke me about my faith." As young marrieds, Barack and Michelle (who also didn't go to church regularly as a child) went to church fairly often—two or three times a month. But after their first child, Malia, was born, they found making the effort more difficult. "I don't know if you've had the experience of taking young, squirming children to church, but it's not easy," he says. "Trinity was always packed, and so you had to get there early. And if you went to the morning service, you were looking at—it just was difficult. So that would cut back on our involvement."

After he began his run for the U.S. Senate, he says, the family sometimes didn't go to Trinity for months at a time. The girls have not attended Sunday school. The family says grace at mealtime, and he talks to the children about God whenever they have questions. "I'm a big believer in a faith that is not imposed but taps into what's already there, their curiosity or their spirit," he says.

Amid the hubbub, Obama continued to try to work out for himself what it meant to be a person of faith. In 1999, while still in the Illinois State Senate, he shared an office suite with Ira Silverstein, an Orthodox Jew. Obama peppered Silverstein with questions about Orthodox restrictions on daily life: the kosher laws and the sanctions against certain kinds of behavior on the Sabbath. "On the Sabbath, if I ever needed anything, Barack would always offer," remembers Silverstein. "Some of the doors are electric, so he would offer to open them … I didn't expect that."

Since severing ties with Wright and Trinity, Obama is a little spiritually rootless again. He lost a friend in Wright—and he lost a home, however tenuous those ties may have been toward the end, in Trinity. He has not found a new church, and he doesn't plan to look for one until after the election. "There's an aspect of the campaign process that would not make it a good time to figure out whether a particular church community worked for us," he says. "Because of what happened at Trinity, we'd be under a spotlight."

Nevertheless, his spiritual life on the campaign trail survives. He says he prays every day, typically for "forgiveness for my sins and flaws, which are many, the protection of my family, and that I'm carrying out God's will, not in a grandiose way, but simply that there is an alignment between my actions and what he would want." He sometimes reads his Bible in the evenings, a ritual that "takes me out of the immediacy of my day and gives me a point of reflection." Thanks to the efforts of his religious outreach team, he has an army of clerics and friends praying for him and e-mailing him snippets of Scripture or Midrash to think about during the day.

IF POLITICO is guilty of anything, it's not invasion of privacy. It's of not reading Newsweek.

Invasion of privacy? Lay off the church thang?

Yea, I pray thee, Brother Judas Judis, giveth thou me a break.