Rebecca Ryskind Teti

Encounters with John Paul II

Apr 26, 2011 / 00:00 am

“Let’s go to the Pope!”

An intimate Confession

Apr 12, 2011 / 00:00 am

What does a person need to be emotionally healthy?

When heroes bite the dust to which we shall return

Mar 29, 2011 / 00:00 am

Another Lent, another dispiriting round of Catholic heroes brought low by their own sins, either actual or alleged.

Reading more into Lent

Mar 15, 2011 / 00:00 am

Prayer, fasting, almsgiving. Those are the three pillars of this penitential season, whose first full week we’re in.

A dear friend hit one of those milestone birthdays and we all showed up to lend moral support. Her adult children were on hand to “roast” her, but the rest of us had entirely benevolent intentions.It was a genuinely lovely affair, a gathering of gracious people our friend has built up around herself simply by being the joyful, prayerful and kind person that she is.The wine flowed and the rooms filled with warm laughter and thoughtful conversation, punctuated all evening by hugs of welcome or handshakes of introduction for new arrivals. You get a little lift being in such company, but I wouldn’t have thought any more of it had I not learned of a conversion that took place as a result.One of the newer members of this community of friends almost didn’t come because her husband was so negative on the idea. “I am too old for another event where gossip passes for socializing and acid remarks take the place of genuine wit.”“Freezing a smile on my face and pretending to like it while people brag about their kids and their careers is what I do all week in business. I can’t bear to do it more on my own time.”He made such a good case his wife lost her taste for the party, too. Good will towards the birthday girl was all that dressed them into their party clothes and dragged them out the door to face another draining, tiresome social event. The ride there was almost silent as they gathered force to endure the evening.Not so the return home.It started out in thoughtful quiet. Suddenly at a stoplight the husband turned to his wife and a chorus of words spilled out: “That was incredible! Do you realize we spent four hours with all those people and I didn’t hear a single sour comment the whole night? No ragging on people! No shallow palaver!”He proceeded to chatter excitedly the rest of the ride home about how different these folks were than anyone he’d ever met. “Everyone was so sincere but not stuffy. What a pleasure!”The next morning the husband did not report for breakfast at the usual hour and the wife found her sweetheart — not heretofore a very pious man — in his study praying and reading his Bible, a practice he has kept up since. God can use anything, even party conversation. The late journalist Robert Novak became Catholic as the result of a throw-away line at a cocktail party. For St. Augustine, it was an idle bit of news about some vague acquaintances that set his final conversion in motion.This tells us, too, that people are watching us, and listening, all the time. There’s something in the human spirit that is always unconsciously on the lookout for signs of hope — and the most seemingly inconsequential things can provide them. There is power in simply being good; in being happy. I once helped some Nashville Dominican sisters out by driving a van-full of their students to a local amusement park for the day. I can still hear the soft Tennessee lilt of the principal earnestly thanking me at the end of the day, “It’s important we show these kids we can have fun without sin!” Fun without sin. That’s an important part of Christian life, along with prayer, evangelization, carrying the cross and the works of mercy. St. Thomas writes of the need to rest and restore the body and spirit, and instructs us in a virtue — “eutrapelia” — which governs recreation. Literally it comes from the Greek for wittiness or pleasant conversation, but Thomas uses it to mean a healthy sense of fun.Prayer, works of evangelization, carrying our crosses, corporal and spiritual works of mercy: these are all essential to Christian life. But so is merriment. Sometimes the best way to preach God’s love is simply to be good company.

The family-centered economy

Feb 15, 2011 / 00:00 am

President Obama’s 3.7 trillion dollar budget happened to be released at the same time Conservative politicians and activists gathered in Washington, DC for the annual Conservative Political Action Committee convention this month.

Adam & Eve & Valentine’s Day

Feb 1, 2011 / 00:00 am

I heard something truly shocking not too long ago: a man spoke in open admiration of his wife. No, really. It was at a break between sessions at a conference. A couple of us were standing around pouring coffee and jawing about this and that as people do. I can’t quite recall how it came up, but just as naturally as anything one of the men started talking about how wonderful his wife is: “You will not have a banal conversation with my wife. She is thoughtful and deep and always brings conversation to a more profound and edifying level. At the same time, she has such a sense of fun and such gentle good humor, she will never bring you down. She is a beautiful soul, a wonderful writer and an extraordinary person.”As he spoke I was filled with the desire to meet his wife, who sounds lovely and lively! Three other ideas struck me forcefully as well as he was talking. It was truly delightful hearing a husband speak with such unabashed affection for his wife. It was so refreshing it warmed my heart for several days and the thought of it still makes me smile.Secondly, I’ve been reflecting that the reason this utterly minor incident so caught my attention is because it is rare to hear spouses complement each other. The social convention is to gripe a little –perhaps in a joking way—about differences between the sexes. Or if the two spouses are out together in public, they tend to crack wise at each others’ expense. I’m sure this isn’t entirely negative. Some of the moments I feel closest to my husband are when we’re joshing each other. Jokes can be gentle and genuinely affectionate, and the most intimate connections of the heart that would be inappropriate to put on display for others. Sometimes we tease to keep from exposing deeper feelings to ridicule or to the public. Still, isn’t it odd that the President can praise the First Lady, but otherwise what we’re most likely to hear about are the burned roasts, the forgotten anniversaries, the odd-ball habits? It seems to me there’s more than a little savor of Adam & Eve in this spousal tendency to poke at each other rather than praise. Rather than manfully admit his own guilt after the Fall, Adam pointed at Eve: “This woman you gave me! She tempted me.” It smacks a lot of “Take my wife…please!” doesn’t it? It would have been nobler in Adam to stick up for his wife, but in his weakness he instead added to the burden of sin and separation which their mutual disobedience introduced into every relationship since. Which brings me to the third reflection engendered by a simple remark. It made such an impression on me I felt inspired to write a note to the wife in question to let her know how her husband talks about her when she’s not around. I received a nice note back, assuring me she knows how blessed she is, and praising her husband in turn. “How blessed I am to be loved by him and to love him.” Marriage has its crosses as married people know. Thinking of the charm and delight of hearing a man praise his wife — in contrast to what seems like a constant assault on marriage legally and culturally — it occurs to me that a perhaps neglected means to strengthen marriage is deceptively simple. To the litany of gripes and dysfunction and jeering we might add a quiet, but clear and encouraging counter-witness of what’s right and lovely about Christian marriage.“My husband is wonderful.” “I love my wife.”

Marching toward 'somebodyness'

Jan 18, 2011 / 00:00 am

I re-read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” yesterday: my modest observance of the King holiday. It’s as eloquent a defense of natural law against relativism and tyranny of the majority as you’ll find.

What I learned from a rabbi this Christmas

Jan 4, 2011 / 00:00 am

Some doctrines we take so for granted that it is a grace to see them fresh – in all their radical character.

Joy to the world

Dec 21, 2010 / 00:00 am

Yesterday I headed down to Franciscan Monastery in Washington, D.C., for a pre-Christmas shrivening. Nothing lightens the heart and the mood like sacramental confession.

The Christian war on Christmas

Dec 7, 2010 / 00:00 am

A grouchy granny routinely called the cops on my husband and his little friends when they were kids in New Jersey.Their crime was roller-skating. These were good boys getting wholesome air and exercise, but she didn’t like the noise of metal skates on the North Bergen sidewalk and wouldn’t tolerate it. I think of her whenever there’s another public crèche protested down or cranky anti-Christmas billboard put up. It doesn’t have to be your celebration – but why must you be so determined to sully other people’s fun? Do Christians declare war on Hanukkah or New Year’s Eve?Pitiable as these sour notes are, I contend that grumpy Christians do more to “war” on Christmas than militant atheists’ insistence that no one dare have fun in front of them. We are almost not allowed to be excited for the coming of Christmas any more, have you noticed? At the first whiff of Advent, suddenly Christianity’s stern-eyed aunts emerge to tell everyone they’re doing it wrong. The Christmas displays are too early. And too tacky. And not religious enough. Someone said “Season’s Greetings!”In the same breath, with heavy sighs, they complain that expectations are too high, there’s too much to prepare, there are too many Advent parties that would be better placed during the Twelve Days. Pray, Pray! they urge. Pray instead of shop, lest the world steal Christmas from us unawares. They are absolutely correct, these Aunts, of course. The Church in her wisdom gives us Advent as a time to renew our faith and allow a sense of spiritual anticipation to build in our hearts to be fulfilled in joy at Christmas. Skipping Advent is a recipe for Christmas disappointment.The Aunts might remember, though, that we’re to take the beam from our own eye first. It’s not necessary to fret about what others are doing – only to live Advent well ourselves and see if our example doesn’t make a quiet impact. At least our own homes will be joyful!Here are two further reasons not to worry about commercialism. First, “Black Friday” is not, as in confusion I once thought, a reference to the Great Depression. It’s short for “In the black Friday,” because most commercial shops operate in the red all year until Christmas shopping makes up the shortfall. Scrooge can hate Christmas all he likes. He still needs it to thrive, whatever his private religious leanings. The Incarnation is in a sense the foundation and center of our economy! This is not to say commercialism is not a vice: only that the Lord has a puckish sense of humor and allows himself these gentle ironies.Another person who noticed – back in 1977—that Christians are now expected to denounce Christmas as tacky and commercial is Joseph Ratzinger. Of course anyone who says that is quite correct the future pope admits, but he wonders whether the unnecessary gifts and maudlin sentiments might mask something more important.“The sentimental framework often provides the protecting shield behind which lies a noble and genuine sentiment that is simply reluctant to expose itself to the gaze of the other.”In other words, no one wants to risk exposing his heart – so we hide our love behind cards, decorations and wrapping paper. This is the second point. Christmas frees people to love and be kind to one another without fear of derision. So we may want to think about how hard to denounce the shopping and gift-giving.Commercialism does contradict the simplicity of a baby in a cave in Bethlehem. However, Cardinal Ratzinger continues, “Underneath it all, does it not originate in the notion of giving and thus the inner urgency of love, with its compulsion to share, to give of oneself to the other?”Christmas is not a private feast to be horded for initiates while we scold everyone else for misunderstanding.It’s God’s gift to us and Christianity’s gift to the world. Even its least celebration is a cause for joy.Note: a portion of this column originally appeared in altered form in Faith & Family magazine.

On the power of Thanksgiving

Nov 23, 2010 / 00:00 am

A couple of years ago my husband and I took the kids on a Thanksgiving trip to Yorktown.The battlefield is well-preserved, and the historical preservationists keep a live encampment on site for the benefit of tourists.No history-book description of the conditions of deprivation under which Washington's men labored can possibly convey what you see there, walking where the Continental Army lived and fought. It’s hard to imagine the cold, the abject poverty, the grisly instruments of the battlefield “surgeon” and the pathetic tent for the women-folk and children of the enlisted men who trailed after the Army because their husbands and fathers weren’t being paid, so they had no place to live.If you stand there as we did, on a cold but sunny winter’s day, the wind blows through your thermal insulated coat and boots and you think about the men who had no such luxuries on much colder, soggier, darker days for months at a time. You find yourself wondering whether your own attachment to liberty is strong enough to endure such conditions, and come to a kind of humbled awe before the forefathers who did so endure.You feel gratitude, and a desire to live up to what they were willing to die for.It’s easy in hindsight to take history for granted, as if it had to unfold the way it did. But visit the battlefields of the War for Independence, remind yourself that Washington lost far more battles than he won and faced a seemingly unending stream of disasters, and the eventual emergence of the United States of America seems more like a miracle than a historical necessity. I sometimes wonder if we have the logic of Thanksgiving backwards. Do we have the feast because of our many blessings? Or have we been blessed as a nation because as a people we have always been ready to praise God and turn to him for help?Gauzy folklore about the first Thanksgiving notwithstanding, the Pilgrims could have been forgiven for having more regrets than gratitude back in 1623. Someone named H.U. Westermayer is famous on the internet for observing “The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.”Did Washington win because the Puritans thanked God and prayed for the emerging nation?Their salutary precedent has endured in every stage of our history.There were national days of thanksgiving during the period of the Articles of Confederation. Shortly after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified in 1789, both houses of Congress requested a day of thanksgiving, a request to which now-President Washington happily acceded. His proclamation is striking not only for its expression of gratitude to the Lord, but for its call to every citizen to humbly ask God to pardon national sins and give each person grace to perform his or her personal and civic duties well so that good government could endure.In years to come, presidents frequently called for days of prayer and thanks when crises were averted –or when help was needed.At the height of the Civil War, President Lincoln found a number of blessings for which to thank God, among them the growth of the free population by “emancipation and immigration” and the continuing courage and fortitude of the people. Like other presidents, though, he asked people not only to thank God for what they had, but to humble themselves and pray earnestly for peace. Theodore Roosevelt said in one of his Thanksgiving Day proclamations that “No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with the gratitude to the Giver of good who has blessed us."I do wonder, when all is revealed at the close of time, how much of our nation’s fortune will turn out to have been called down by all the good folks throughout our history who have earnestly interceded for her –and how much our future depends on the sincerity with which we pray for our nation before we eat our wonderful dinners on Thursday.

Entrepreneurs of grace

Nov 9, 2010 / 00:00 am

November is heaven’s month. It begins with back-to-back feasts to remind us that no matter how alone we may be or feel, we are in fact part of the biggest, happiest family imaginable: the communion of saints. The saints proper are those already enjoying eternity with God, and from that blessed state bestowing blessings on us—their friends still on the journey. The holy souls, whom we’ve been praying for all week and will continue to remember all month, are so close to heaven their joy is all but complete. A little boost from us and they’re in!Towards the end of the month we close out the liturgical year by celebrating Christ the King. That beautiful feast is both a witness here and now that we reject all gods but the True one, and an anticipation of the joyful day when the Lord will gather us all to himself in the perfect happiness of heaven.So November offers us an entire month to meditate on heaven, the help we have to get there, and who we will bring along with us. Almost since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI has been showing us the path to heaven by re-introducing us to the saints. In his weekly audiences, after completing his predecessor’s walk through the Psalms, the Pope has taught us about the Fathers of the Church, St. Paul and great theologians, and now he’s walking us through the great women saints. This is no mere academic exercise. Benedict’s project as Pope is to help us rediscover the joy and beauty of Christianity so that we will in turn spread the Good News to others. Have you ever known someone so joyful it makes you happy to be around her? Or so kind he makes you want to do good as well? That’s the power of holiness to attract. Christianity spreads not so much by scolding what is immoral (though clear teaching on right and wrong is essential) as by inspiring people with goodness they see and experience. As Benedict noted in a recent audience on Hildegard of Bingen, “The style with which she exercised the ministry of authority… inspired a holy emulation in the practice of goodness, so much so that, as we see from testimonies of the time, the mother and the daughters competed in their reciprocal esteem and service.”In a recent Q & A session with young people, the pope explained that prayer and holiness don’t separate us from real life, they anchor us to it. Beware a prayer which alienates you from life; that wouldn’t be true prayer, he tells them. True prayer will help you engage real life, because it will protect you from pride and presumption and help you to be truly free. Did the saints then have it easy? Does prayer melt all problems away? Not at all. Prayer is not magic. Rather, the Pope says: “Faith and prayer do not solve problems but… enable us to face them with fresh enlightenment and strength, in a way that is worthy of the human being.”Which brings us back to the saints whose friendship we celebrate all month. In a phrase I love, the Pope shows that the life of grace is not boring, and does not turn us into cookie-cutter copies of each other. “If we look at the history of the Church we see that it is peopled by a wealth of Saints and Blesseds who, precisely by starting from an intense and constant dialogue with God, illumined by faith, were able to find creative, ever new solutions to respond to practical human needs in all the centuries: health, education, work, etc. Their entrepreneurial character was motivated by the Holy Spirit and by a strong and generous love for their brethren….”We are called to be “entrepreneurs of grace,” energetic in spreading God’s love to others so that Christ’s love conquers the hearts of everyone around us.

Should We Fear Halloween?

Oct 26, 2010 / 00:00 am

Do Christians have any business celebrating Halloween?The perennial debate between those who see trick-or-treat night as harmless fun and others who fear it’s a pinch of incense on the altar of a pagan festival never seems to get resolved.I have no hope of resolving the matter here either -- only a modest proposal that we respect each other’s good faith judgments. Some years ago Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P. laid out a pretty convincing case that in spite of what we may have been told, Halloween never was a pagan holiday. It’s true the ancient Celts had a minor holiday on October 31st, but they had a minor holiday on the last day of every month. There was nothing special about the last evening of October –certainly no widespread pagan or cultic observance- until Pope Gregory III moved All Saints Day to November 1st – which made the previous evening a vigil feast: All Hallow’s Eve. The macabre costumes we associate with Halloween don’t come from the ancient Celts at all, but from France, where the observance of All Souls day began as a practice of the monastery at Cluny and eventually spread to the rest of the Church. The French observed the day with special masses and costumes.Sometime during the late Medieval period, when survivors of the numerous outbreaks of the plague became fascinated by their own mortality and often portrayed ghostly skeletons in the “danse macabre,” the costumes began to reflect that interest. Fr. Thompson takes the charming view that “Halloween” as we know it is uniquely American. He thinks it came about as a result of the mingling of the French Catholic observance of All Souls Day (from which we get the costumes and the ghosts and skeletons) and the English Protestant observance of Guy Fawkes’ day (from which trick-or- treating comes).So one line of reasoning goes: Halloween is not pagan or satanic in origin, it’s just good fun, and an opportunity to bond with friends and neighbors. Some parents, though, see a confluence of Satanists, neo-pagans, atheists and aggressive secularists adopting Halloween as their own and prefer not to expose their kids to it. They prefer to prioritize All Saints Day, and have their kids dress up as saints rather than other kinds of costumes.Who’s right? For that I think St. Paul provides the answer in Romans 14. Writing about differences that crept up in the early Church about all kinds of minor observances, Paul doesn’t attempt to resolve them; he urges instead a great deal of respect for other people’s decisions:“Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls.” In other words, St. Paul says, on contingent matters, what’s important is not that your neighbor agrees with you, but that your own conscience is clear before God. If for whatever reason someone thinks a certain practice will harm his Christian walk, respect that. Conversely, don’t assume that what you think will harm you has the same affect on everyone.Paul even addresses the question of how we observe feasts directly:“One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind.”Again, for Paul the question is to be responding to Christ’s will for you personally rather than doing what everyone else does. There is an expression often attributed to St. Augustine that applies. “In needful things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity.”The needful thing for Catholics is that we honor God in our celebrations next week. That means particularly the observance of All Saints Day and the prayers for the dead during the octave of All Souls.Whether we observe Halloween or not is up to us!

God’s Power Can Leave You Breathless

Oct 12, 2010 / 00:00 am

I was blessed recently to attend a conference on “discernment of spirits.” What do the actions of God in a soul look and feel like? How do we experience them? How can we tell which of our thoughts to accept and which to reject? After two talks detailing how to recognize which movements of the soul come from God and which don’t, we held a round-table in which participants were invited to share their own experiences, so we could "see" what we’d been studying in practice. A woman I’ll call Joan revealed an amazing story which she gave me permission to re-tell anonymously. As sometimes happens, the birth of one of her children brought distinct memories of childhood abuse she'd only vaguely dealt with to the fore in a powerful way. She entered depression and deep spiritual darkness, during which she was consumed with two thoughts: hatred for her abuser and deep rage against God for abandoning her. "I was helpless and innocent," she scolded Him, "and where were You?" This condition persisted for some time, her faith life plunging to nothingness (though she continued to attend Sunday Mass). One day, during a routine visit, her mother-in-law (knowing nothing of these difficulties) asked Joan to go to mass with her, casually mentioning that the priest who would celebrate was battling depression and needed prayers. Joan approached the priest afterward to say that she had empathy because she was suffering from depression too. "You need an anointing," he said. She tried to demur, but he insisted, so she received the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, and felt one degree better. One degree from black is still black though, so she remained in spiritual darkness. The thought occurred to her, "Whatsoever you do to the least of these, that you do unto me." She knew that this was somehow the answer, but she was furious with God and refused to pray or "unpack" this idea. Shortly thereafter her husband said on a Sunday, "Hon, let's go to mass together this week. I'll hold the baby part of the time and you hold him part of the time, and we'll both get to pray." When her turn came, she knelt in the pew, relented, and said to God, "Fine! Whatsoever you do to the least of these, that you do unto me. What the hell does that mean?!" ...And suddenly it dawned on her what it meant. She had never been alone, Christ had been with her the entire time, and her abuser had hurt not only her but Jesus himself. As she spoke these things, her eyes filled with tears of joy recalling her liberation. "When you have been used as an object of degradation and filth, that's what you think you are, so I had been carrying around this spiritual tar, as if I were nothing, just a piece of trash. Now I almost physically felt all that tar lift off me and land where it belonged: on him." "In an instant I understood God’s love for me and my own worth.”God was not done, however.“Then I saw my abuser, whose face I had wanted to rip off, covered in this tar. I remembered what it felt like to carry that –and it had never belonged to me, and did belong to him.“Awful! I felt such compassion for him. The hatred disappeared and I felt a strong impulse to make sacrifices and pray for him so that he could be saved." "And then in my head I heard the Lord say to me, " ...and if you did that, this evil would be made a good." "I had in a short period of time a complete healing of myself, the total transformation of my hate into compassion, and a profound experience of God's capacity to transform any evil into good. That is what He does."Every woman sitting at that round-table had such a story. Not all were as dramatic, but each revealed the tenderness and intimacy and specificity with which God touches each individual soul with just exactly what it needs.As St. Julie Billiart says, “How good is the good God!”

How Many Bigots Do You Know?

Sep 28, 2010 / 00:00 am

Someone wrote me a letter taking issue with something I’d written about health care. The letter complained that it’s not “moral” for people to profit from health care.My correspondent runs a farm, so I couldn’t help wondering how he would answer anyone who accused him of “profiting” from food – an even more fundamental commodity than health care.“You have to understand,” I imagine him saying, “I’m not gauging you. I have to feed my family, and the price for my wheat includes more than seed and water. It’s also based on the cost of farming equipment, pest control, fertilizer, pay for seasonal workers during the harvest…” and he could list many other things.The cost of a doctor visit, no less than a bushel of wheat, includes hidden costs such as medical school, malpractice insurance, equipment, nursing and office staff salaries and so forth. Why did it not occur to my farmer friend to presume the same good faith of another he expects for himself? How routine it has become to assume the bad faith of our fellow citizens! Support an entitlement program, you must be lazy or a panderer. Oppose the same program, you must be callous towards the poor.Think it’s unwise to tamper with the definition of marriage, no one engages your reasons – you’re simply a bigot.Catholics, alas, are not innocent. It is very rare to see an argument against capital punishment or the Iraq war in the Catholic press that doesn’t rest on maligning supporters’ motives. Whatever happened to persuasive arguments? I fear this incivility betokens a loss of faith in self-government. The premise of the Declaration’s creed that all persons are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights has led to two great American strengths.The first is the ability to see persons as individuals rather than as members of categories; the second is confidence that in spite of competing interests, when we meet together as equals through our political and civic institutions, we can examine facts, learn from each other and often come to agreement or just accommodation.The rhetorical tendency to dehumanize our fellow citizens when they disagree with us – to cast aspersions on their honesty and integrity – is a totalitarian impulse, out of step with both the Declaration and Catholic social teaching.We see our fellow citizens increasingly not as friends to be persuaded, but as inferior beings to be compelled.“Shut up!” we explain.To “dialogue” with a person, you have to begin by assuming his good will and good intentions. And why not? Do we not remember the extraordinary outpouring of volunteers trying desperately to find survivors in the rubble of 9/11? The 1,000,000 citizens who left their own lives behind to volunteer in rebuilding New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina? Americans routinely give close to $300 billion in private charity annually – over and above the foreign aid and entitlement programs we fund with our taxes.We have a nation filled with people who are hard-working, decent, generous, and not trying to make life difficult for others. It’s also a huge country, with a wide range not only of beliefs, but of circumstances, and often when we understand people’s circumstances, we come to sympathize with their views, even if we don’t share them.So when people in Arizona pass a law that cracks down on illegal immigration, it might or might not be a wise law – I have my doubts. But can we truly not see the fact of that legislation as a cry for help rather than a sudden outburst of hatred for Hispanics – who settled Arizona for heaven’s sake?Have we really nothing to say to the family whose father – known for being a Good Samaritan to illegal immigrants – was murdered on his own property by members of a Mexican drug cartel but “Let’s see how many people against bigotry we can find on Facebook?” Why is our default assumption that the same people who rush to help anyone anywhere in the world must be bigots? Obviously, having a legitimate problem is not proof that your proposed solution is credible, and that’s why open debate is crucial. It’s how we weed out stupid or overly parochial ideas and allow great ones to come to the fore. Self-government of this sort takes time and can be messy. It also requires confidence that most people are decent, worth listening to, and worth trying to engage and persuade.

The Lady of Today’s Sorrow

Sep 14, 2010 / 00:00 am

Perhaps because of its lugubrious Old World overtones, devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows does not seem to have caught on among optimistic Americans. Nevertheless, each September 15, the Church invites us to contemplate the seven sorrows of Mary, which unite her to the passion of her Son.