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Punditry

Pandering or inculturation?

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Father Michael Pfleger defending Jeremiah
Wright and
Louis Farrakhan.

�Dr. Wright is one of the great
biblical scholars of our country and the best of preachers in the
prophetic tradition. Dr. Wright has been shamefully demonized by 30
second sound bites that have tried to re-define him into someone other
than who he is.”

Yeah sound bites from his own greatest
hits collection.  It is
so good for a priest to defend someone like anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan
who has called white people “potential humans – they haven’t evolved
yet” or Jeremiah Wright who blames the government for creating
HIV/AIDS to target black people and prints propaganda from a terrorist
organization in his bulletin.

Funny though how such a “great biblical
scholar” has managed to write zero book on biblical scholarship.

One thing I find disturbing about Father
Michael Pfleger’s homily style is that it seems to be a stereotype of
largely black Protestant preachers.  If he was transferred to
a parish with a largely white demographic I doubt if he would consider
speaking in the same way.  It just seems to me to be quite
condescending, but maybe it is valid inculturation.  It does
seem to me to be insulting in some way just like Hillary Clinton
adopting a different accent and speaking style when speaking before a
black congregation.   Oh well, at least Father didn’t call for
snuffing out anybody this time.

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Punditry

Forced Conversion!

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

The Papal Visit blog of The Washington Times relates
a story.

   However, therein
lies a hazard for reporters or little or no faith. One reporter � I
will call her “Infidel,” as that’s the name she selected � wrote me
recently about something she finds troublesome. She was chagrined to
find that in order to acces confidential media information for the
upcoming papal visit, she would have to type “ChristOurHope” on the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website.

“And it’s the username!” she wrote me. “It feels a bit like a forced
conversion. At the very least it’s tone deaf. I wonder if the Vatican
believes that only Catholic reporters will be covering his visit? I’ve
talked to Episcopalians, Catholics, Muslims and plenty of Christians
and pretty much every one of them, reporter or layperson, is absolutely
incredulous.”

Typing “ChristOurHope” feels like a forced
conversion?  Wait
till she finds out the password is “RepentNowOrGoToHell.”

Also notice her total ignorance in
thinking it was the Vatican that set this up instead of realizing that
this would be from the USCCB.  When you know so little about
what your covering exactly how do you cover it? Though this is common
ignorance since it seems reporters often confuse the Vatican from
pretty much anything.

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Liturgy

Marty Haugen replies

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Marty Haugen replies about comments on the
criticism of the selection
of his music for the Papal visit.

    For
twenty
plus years I have been told, mainly anonymously through the internet,
how I have been personally responsible for destroying Roman Catholic
worship. I have never responded; however, I wish to offer a few
comments now.

    First of all, although I am not Roman
Catholic, I have a deep love and respect for and faith in the worship
tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. My own hesitancy about joining
the Church is not about its eucharistic theology, but rather around the
unwillingness of the Church to commission, ordain and welcome all
humans as Jesus did�male and female, married and unmarried, saints and
sinners. I believe that the Church, God�s people and all of creation
have suffered from this omission.

    I
do not think of my own music as
central or important to Roman Catholic worship, present or future.
I
began writing as a parish musician; I still keep the vision that to be
�catholic� is to learn and love and embrace the best of the past
tradition and to welcome the �best� of what is new, as Gods [sic]
speaks through all cultures and expressions (see �Lumen Gentia� [sic]).
I leave it to communities and to the Holy Spirit that will (more than
us, thank God) guide the future choices that will last.

    I had nothing to do with the choice of
�Mass of Creation� for a Papal Mass. Having said that, I believe that
attacks upon Tom Stehle in his efforts to engage a congregation with
what he hoped would be familiar and meaningful to them (using parts of
the liturgy with currently approved texts) were unfair, un-Christian
and beneath those of us who truly care about how God speaks through our
Sacraments.

Well I don’t think that he has destroyed
Catholic worship which is an over the top accusation.
 My main complaint is that his music has become such a standard
and quite over used.  It just does not deserve the “pride of
place” it has received.  It is not the writers of music that
are at fault really, it is those who continue to promote inferior
pieces of sacred music.  Even the Saint Louis Jesuit’s never
intended that there music would be used at Mass.

The above was posted on a new to me blog Commander
Craig’s Corner who is also doing blog talk radio on Saturdays and
has upcoming interviews with Deal Hudson and Fr. Fessio.

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News

A positive development

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Deal
Hudson met with Rev. John Hagee in connection with
anti-Catholic statements he has made in the past and posts on what is
the first of meetings that they will have.  Rev. Hagee does
seem to be truly perplexed in being called an anti-Catholic and these
meetings are quite a positive development.  It does
appear that he was rather tone-deaf towards the concerns of Catholic
more than being venomently anti-Catholic. On interesting fact
that came out was the John Hagee had helped support a group of Ursuline
Sisters in San Antonio for several years.

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Other

It is the only fighting architecture

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Reading through G.K. Chesterton’s
Miscellany
of Men I came across this:

The truth about Gothic is, first, that
it is alive, and second, that it
is on the march.  It is the Church Militant; it is the only
fighting architecture.  All its spires are spears at rest; and
all its
stones are
stones asleep in a catapult. In that instant of illusion, I could hear
the arches clash like swords as they crossed each other.  The
mighty and numberless columns seemed to go swinging by like the huge
feet of
imperial elephants.  The graven foliage wreathed and blew like
banners
going into battle; the silence was deafening with ail the mingled
noises of a military march; the great bell shook down, as the organ
shook up its thunder.  The thirsty-throated gargoyles shouted
like trumpets
from all the roofs and pinnacles as they passed; and from the lectern
in the core of the cathedral the eagle of the awful evangelist clashed
his wings of brass,

And amid all the noises I seemed to hear the voice of a man shouting in
the midst like one ordering regiments hither and thither in the fight;
the voice of the great half-military master-builder; the architect of
spears.  I could almost fancy he wore armour while he made
that church; and I
knew indeed that, under a scriptural figure, he had borne in either
hand the trowel and the sword.

I could imagine for the moment that the whole of that house of life had
marched out of the sacred East, alive and interlocked, like an army.
 Some Eastern nomad had found it solid and silent in the red
circle of
the desert.  He had slept by it as by a world-forgotten
pyramid;
and been woke at midnight by the wings of stone and brass, the tramping
of the tall pillars, the trumpets of the waterspouts.  On such
a night
every snake or sea-beast must have turned and twisted in every crypt or
corner of the architecture.  And the fiercely coloured saints
marching
eternally in the flamboyant windows would have carried their glorioles
like torches
across dark lands and distant seas; till the whole mountain of music
and
darkness and lights descended roaring on the lonely Lincoln
hill.  So
for some hundred and sixty seconds I saw the battle-beauty of the
Gothic; then
the last furniture-van shifted itself away; and I saw only a church
tower
in a quiet English town, round which the English birds were floating.

This helps me to see something that I
don’t like about modern church architecture in that it seems to me to
be a surrender or something defensive.  That the Church
militant has surrendered to architectural fads that are quite cold and
much more like a dead thing than being alive.  The L.A.
Cathedral is defensive since it looks much more like a concrete bunker
than a church alive and on the move proclaiming Christ.  That
with older forms of sacred architecture a church proudly proclaimed
itself as a church directed towards the glory of God while some forms
of modern style meekly proclaims I am a church, but I might be a bank
or an auditorium. 

There is also this nice bit about the need
for a creed.

And it is supremely so in the case of
religion.  As long as you have a creed, which every one in a
certain group believes or is supposed to believe, then that group will
consist of the old recurring figures of religious history, who can be
appealed to by the creed and judged by it; the saint, the hypocrite,
the brawler, the weak brother. 
These people do each other good; or they all join together to do the
hypocrite good,
with heavy and repeated blows.  But once break the bond of
doctrine
which alone holds these people together and each will gravitate to his
own kind outside the group.  The hypocrites will all get
together and
call each other saints; the saints will get lost in a desert and call
themselves weak brethren; the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker
in a general atmosphere of imbecility; and the brawler will go off
looking for
somebody else with whom to brawl.

The problem with Chesterton is that he is
too quotable and you go from page to page thinking I got to remember
that.

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Punditry

Help Wanted

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

In a sign of the intensifying battle
for Catholic voters between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton,
particularly ahead of next month�s Pennsylvania primary, both
candidates have brought Catholic outreach coordinators aboard their
campaigns, God-o-Meter has learned.

Just last week, Obama�s campaign hired Mark Linton, a legislative aide
working on poverty and other social policy issues in Obama�s Senate
office, as its National Catholic Outreach Coordinator. Linton, who had
previously worked for Catholic Relief Services, is currently focused
almost exclusively on Pennsylvania, where roughly one in three
Democratic voters are expected to be Catholic.

�Mark�s job is to help get Senator Obama�s message on health care, the
war, and helping American families out to the Catholic grassroots,�
said Joshua DuBois, Obama�s National Director of Religious Affairs, in
an interview Monday, describing Linton�s role. �Obama is just beginning
to introduce himself to Catholics around the country.�

The Obama campaign would not grant a request to interview Linton,
saying he�s not an official spokesperson.

The Clinton camp, meanwhile, has brought aboard Eric McFadden, the
former field director for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a
progressive Washington-based Catholic group founded after the 2004
election to combat conservative Catholic advocacy organizations.

More over at beliefnet’s God-o-Meter.

This does make me wonder how a campaign
advertises for a Catholic outreach coordinator?

Help wanted a Catholic outreach
coordinator to help campaign for a candidate that supports the murder
of innocents in the womb, supports experimenting on human embryos and
killing them afterwards, supports cloning of humans for research and
killing them afterwards, supports killing the sick and the elderly if
they want to die or just have an evil family member representing them,
plus support other Catholic values like homosexual marriage.
 Must be able to inform fellow Catholics that voting
for a candidate totally in favor of intrinsic evils is acceptable.
 That somehow supporting so many moral evils has no bearing on
their on their character and their decisions.  After
all a candidate that supports sucking the brains out of children as
they are being born obviously is going to make ethical decisions in
their presidency.

Must be able to hold the tension of working for a campaign that will
attack the other Democratic candidate as not being pro-choice enough
while at the same time reaching out to Catholics telling them it
doesn’t matter if their pro-choice in the first place since political
decision will not bring a culture of life an any way whatsoever.

Communication skills are a must in explaining why the candidates
frequent and fervent support of abortion actually means that they are working
on reducing the same.

An advance degree in moral relativism is required along with good
memory skills for repeating phrases such as “pro-choice is not
pro-abortion” and other gems.

Moral schizophrenia while not required is a bonus.

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