archives

" Our job is to bring external realities together with the reality of the political mind. Don't ignore the cognitive dimension. It is through cognitive narratives, metaphors and frames that we understand and express our ideals ". Thus concludes an article at Tikkun.org by George Lakoff titled, ' The Palin Choice ' . The author maintains that the Democrats still haven't learned the lessons in the victories of Reagan and W. The True Strategy of the RNC is Symbolic. In the face of many specific issues, the focus is on Character, Values, (Apparent) Authenticity, Communications, Trust and Identity and the avoidance of Policy.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

By conventional standards, Jesus’ mother is not a major figure in the New Testament. Her name appears barely a dozen times; famously, Mary is mentioned more often in the Qur’an than in the Christian Bible. Yet despite that relatively low profile, few figures in Scripture have been the subject of greater controversy.

For some Protestants, Mary has long loomed as a symbol of Catholicism’s penchant for “adding” to the gospel, in this case an almost blasphemous level of devotion to a mere human being. For some feminists, veneration of Mary as both virgin and mother sets an impossible standard for women, thereby perpetuating male dominance. For many secularists, the body of miraculous lore surrounding Mary, especially her reported apparitions in various parts of the world, strains credibility in a special way.

From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSB	September 8, 2008
	Vol. 6, No. 8

With the political conventions over for this electoral season, I found myself haunted by the memory of an old child’s game called “Pickup Sticks.” In the game of “Pickup Sticks” somebody throws a bundle of long, thin pieces of balsa wood into the air. What had been an orderly assortment of wire-thin skewers is now a higgledy-piggledy mound of wood with each stick of different value.

Task: Pick up each one of them without moving any of the other sticks, accrue as many points as you can and then start again, like darts, toward an established series score. I never really liked the game.

I woke up the morning after the Republican National Convention feeling like I’d just found myself sitting in a pile of pickup sticks. Whatever had defined the two parties before their national conventions suddenly seemed to have blurred a bit. In fact, it’s getting more difficult by the day to tell who’s who anymore.

The Clerical Whispers blog for September 8 has a posting about a new Opus Dei parish in Dublin (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/09/gays-and-divorcees-must-repent-before.html). In an interview with the Irish Sunday Tribune yesterday, the pastor, Fr. Fergus O’Connor, insisted that gays and divorcees must repent before receiving communion at his parish.

For those who may not follow news about religious organizations that have tremendous influence on all our lives—-Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, non-believer—-even when we don’t know it, Opus Dei is a worldwide organization comprised largely of obscenely rich Catholics with connections to high places. Which promotes itself as a corrective to the Catholicism of Vatican II, with its insistence on open dialogue with the contemporary world.

On the Road to Peace by John Dear S.J.	Tuesday, September 9, 2008
	Vol. 3, No. 1

(Note: Here's the final excerpt from my autobiography, A Persistent Peace, published by Loyola Press last month. In 2001, I was living in New York City but traveling extensively speaking to groups large and small. In August, I addressed a gathering in Los Angeles. The violence that the United States wreaks on the world, I said, will come back to haunt us. I quoted Jesus, "All who live by the sword will die by the sword." I tremble to think of it, but shortly my words would prove prescient.)

On Sept. 7 [2001], I presided over a wedding in New Jersey, then took the train home. Along the way, for the first time ever, I spontaneously deviated from routine, making a pit stop for pizza at the World Trade Center. There I sat during Friday rush hour. The journey from New Jersey to New York passes right through that lobby, at the platform of the PATH train. A million people dashed by me in the lobby of the World Trade Tower. I marveled at the teeming city, its vast variety of characters and eccentrics, the sinners and saints.