The Politics of Reality

There seemed to be a great energy in the meeting of Barack Hussein Obama and Benedict XVI in the Vatican yesterday. The “superstar” handle that John McCain’s campaign so cynically labeled him is true to some degree both home and abroad. You heard about him. Now you get a chance to see him in person.

There is a certain magic when virtual images on the TV come into reality focus and in person. Of course the real of “reality” is sometimes totally different from what you expected to see as compared with the “virtual”. How tall is he? His face and body are three dimensional. There is a handshake and there is a real person on the other end of your hand.

This is not meant to be a PR handout for the White House. It is meant to illustrate that what you see is sometimes not what you get. I read an interesting article from Time magazine again this morning that I read last night. Some of the parts that I skimmed over last night stuck out in a more pronounced way in the light of day.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s article accenting the Presidential visit with the Pope, was a thought or a frame of reference that I have not seen before from her angle on the RC church and its forty year campaign in America to uphold authoritarian rule and its mixing politics with religion. Ms. Townsend states that Barack Obama is more in line with the thoughts of the average American Catholic than the Pope is.

Without a Doubt

In truth, though, Obama's pragmatic approach to divisive policy (his notion that we should acknowledge the good faith underlying opposing viewpoints) and his social-justice agenda reflect the views of American Catholic laity much more closely than those vocal bishops and pro-life activists…

Upon rereading I decided that parts I skimmed over were possibly more important than I originally had thought. In particular:

But there they part ways. Politics requires the ability to listen to different points of view, to step into others' shoes. Obama might call it empathy. While the pope preaches love, listening to the other has been a particular stumbling block for the Catholic hierarchy (as it is for many in power). The hierarchy ignores women's equality and gays' cry for justice because to heed them would require that it admit error and acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong. Before he became John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla had a telling all-or-nothing formulation:

"If it should be decided that contraception is not an evil in itself then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit is on the side of the Protestant Churches."

Archbishop Wojtvla’s remark if quoted correctly says two disturbing things to me:

The idea that “we” are right and the Protestants are wrong. Acting on an informed conscience in general is against the authority of the hierarchy of the Church.

Two, that compromise, that SOME contraception is evil and that separating the pill, condoms etc. from the many tentacled abortion issue was unthinkable and undoable – that compromise was not possible in the black and white mind of the Polish Archbishop.

That attitude has resulted in some heinous decisions. Most famously, in the lead up to the encyclical "Humane Vitae" in 1968, an advisory body of theologians and laity empaneled by the pope advised that the church should reverse its position on birth control and concede that the issue should be a question for morality and for science. But authority—not truth, not love—prevailed: Pope Paul VI, listening to the advice of Wojtyla, disagreed with the majority of these advisers, who had voted 69 to 10 for change, fretting that to change this position would weaken his authority.

One of the ten, Wojtvla, had pushed his ideas over the majority view and onto the pope with a mail order priest’s diploma to decide the next forty years of debate on issues that I believe Ms. Townsend has stated elsewhere on things not mentioned in the bible.

One thing I want to note upon hearing of this quote for the first time – from its sinking in. When looking at the future John Paul II as advisor to Paul VI, I feel I must say that his statement above about the Holy Spirit is a disappointment. That the Polish Archbishop’s siege mentality probably contributed to the thing that “Humanae Vitae” has in common with other religions in time of seize and fear and in the mind of the Archbishop from behind the then “Iron Curtain”.

Unrestricted conception as described and protected by the ideologues of the RC church to this day reminds me of the polygamy sanctioned in Islam and Mormonism in times of siege and fear of war in the past. Both Islam and Mormons are stuck with the embarrassment of the wrong decision being made in the past.

Historically speaking, “Humanae Vitae” is a similar embarrassment to Roman Catholics. The need to produce more sons and future armies as in John Paul II’s case was no doubt to accommodate his private and nationalist dreams of future war on the Polish Communist state.

John Paul II was almost right. The Holy Spirit does favor individual informed conscience in the Secular but not necessarily Protestant state.

"C" Street Prayer House - Wash. D.C.

Amidst the current Republican sex scandals in both Washington and South Carolina there seems to be a cult like secret Christian prayer group located in a house on “C” Street in Washington D.C.. It, a former convent and still having a tax free religious status, is home to some of the most conservative fundamentalists in Congress.

In all fairness I have seen on TV how Senator Chuck Schumer shares a townhouse with three other Senators and commutes home on weekends. I don’t know about the prayer breakfast thing with liberal Chuck and company.

The house on “C” Street acts as a dormitory of sorts for Senators and Congressmen who cannot afford on their stingy little salaries to maintain a family home in Washington and their distant home voting base.

I have heard the cable talk show host Joe Scarborough mention that he had to quit his house seat in order to attend to family personal matters related to his being away from home 200 nights a year. I have done some long distance commuting and I feel for people who have to make that part of a work/home/family situation.

It has been noted in some places that Washington and its politics were a lot nicer in the forties, fifties and sixties. Politicians were not so nasty or so divisive as when their families went to the same church or their children went to the same school or they belonged to the same D.C. country club as their opponents in the other party. I think that had to do with economics. Washington is such an expensive place to live now.

All this being said in the interest of fairness, there seems to be something a little crazy the way some of the guys in the “C” Street Prayer House are acting.

Senator John Ensign of Nevada is a current resident of the “C” Street Prayer House. He recently admitted to adultery and has not resigned. There seems to be a lot of weird side effects of his adultery. There would seem to be bribe and or hush money being paid out by Ensign’s parents to his former piece on the side. Well, it just gets more thick with layer upon payer with deceit and corruptness of moral character.

Governor Mark Sanford had mentioned the “C” Street association in his recent confession of sin and adultery. Apparently he got Christian counseling to help him stop his sin in Argentina. Sanford had been a resident of the dorm when he was a House Rep before becoming Governor.

Presiding over this “Prayer House” is Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma with the title of deacon. To his credit Doctor Coburn (He is a medical doctor) used to practice medicine on weekends in Oklahoma when he flew back from Washington as a Congressman when he was a member of the lower house.

The deacon we know gave counseling to Governor Sanford and now there is a question if Coburn helped Ensign write a letter to his mistress trying to break off the affair. Senator Coburn – ever hear the line about jack of many trades = master on none?

The liberal press is trying to make the prayer house out to be some sort of secret fundie cult prayer cell but I take the whole thing on face value. Sometimes a bunch of fundie nuts living together is just that – a bunch of fundie nuts (with an occasional fruit mixed in). Whatever.

I am enjoying seeing the holier that thou fundamentalist right wing melt down now that the GOP is in exile. What new, perhaps Green party, will replace the GOP in the future elections?

I am not pleased with the present administration or his party and its unlimited bailout to the rich and their failed banking system that helped destroy the present world economy.

I miss the cloth coated republican days of Gerald Ford and Bob Dole.

Boy, what a mess many of us have in our economics, politics, religions and personal lives these days. Perhaps it is a good time for real prayer.

Gay Miracle by Jesus - Luke 7:2 - ?

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And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, and ready to die.Luke 7:2

And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.Matthew 8:6

There are of course differences in translations of the synoptic gospels, Matt, Mark, Luke and I almost always go back to the King James Version of the gospels believing that in the manner they were assembled and translated from the ancient languages to have been a fair distribution of meaning of these considered to be sacred Christian texts.

Some things over the years I remember and reassemble in my mind to clarify later.

I do remember as I have mentioned earlier that some gospels passages have stuck in my mind over the years from my youth and having been read in church. And in those fairly ancient days of the fifth and sixth decade of the twentieth century, I remember a phrase that struck a note back then and now I feel in my heart the time to speak.

The passage in Luke 7 was about a Roman Centurion who asks Jesus for a healing of his servant “who was dear unto him”. Of course the gospels and all ancient histories lack a great deal of detail that we in the modern age demand and expect from writing. But that phrase has stuck in my ears and memory until yesterday when a thought gelled in my psyche.

Matthew has the same story line in its eighth chapter but the Roman’s slave and or servant is said to have “palsy” and was greatly tormented. No mention of a bond of affection and or respect for the life of the servant/slave. Of course some of these translations are many times trying to empathize with the culture of the times.

Luke I have been taught was a Greek. As such his Greek outlook and Greek culture seem to not be ashamed to add a note of affection between master and slave. Perhaps the dying slave had been a tutor, a second father, or he, and I presume he here, might have been his lover. We will never know.

If you believe in the basic message of Jesus, then Apostles or later disciples who wrote down the early oral traditions of the early Christian cult aimed for accuracy and perhaps on occasion feelings. Greco-Roman culture did not draw lines so tightly and meanly between sexual practices as we now do in very recent history.

The use of the story of a Roman Centurion could have been a later add-on to make the gospels more user friendly to Greeks and Romans after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.. I think rather than being an add on, it seems the real thing because it speaks of faith and a hierarchy of principles and commands and blind discipline that held the Roman Empire together for so long. I think it possible and probable that Judaism for a Roman army officer was a local religion and a local “god” that demanded attention and respect. After all, it says the Centurion built a synagogue. Not perhaps kosher on his part so much as trying to win the hearts and minds of a captive people.

Jesus in his ever widening circle of the people, real people, outside the sham world of the Temple crowd in Jerusalem appealed to all levels of humanity and to their individual needs and cultures.

I believe that this curing of a “servant dear unto him” may have been an unbiased act of love by Jesus, by God to a gay couple. It was perhaps a gay miracle by Jesus.

I say all this because an energy hit me yesterday. Someone kindly forwarded an article in USA today about some conservative bishop in the Church of England ranting his hate directly at gays and indirectly at women ordinations etc. It is a wonder how these conservatives in the COE/Episcopal Church can eliminate 50% of humanity in the form of women and say another 5% in Gays. Rip the church apart and live in the mistaken belief that 45%, a trimmed budget of Jesus’ Church, is a queer fulfillment of Jesus’ command to preach to all nations. I do not believe Jesus left a list of the select few in those nations that should listen and or be saved.

So, the article in USA Today was negative energy created in the universe by a very smug blind cleric. Well the negative energy hit me and it knocked me in the head and I remembered the thing about the Centurian and his “gay” servant that I had filed away for some time. The world and or universe may be on its way back to balance now that the Centurion and his servant are now out of the closet so to speak. Thank you Bishop for the kick in the ass.

Jesus loves us all, every one of us.

Communion with People

I was moved by what I read in the following homily by Father Kennedy of St. Mary’s community in Brisbane. His words begin to trace a human experience and are about a former parishioner that chose to not follow him down the street away from the old church. The parishioner has cerebral palsy and lives in an assisted care center.

Peter Kennedy - Homily - Sunday 14th June

Now the people at Lotus House have experienced physical, psychological and sexual abuse in church and government run institutions - abuse they have never been able to fully escape. I think that one of my reasons for being apprehensive about going into Lotus House was that I, an official religious person, might not be all that acceptable to the victims of such systematic abuse and yet the opposite happened - people smiling a welcome, putting out their hand to touch mine…

Again there was no meal but there was for myself as I walked away a sense of Eucharist/communion that left me promising myself that I must return to Lotus House - not for their sake but for mine…

During my conversation with Michael whenever I mentioned God he fell about crying, tears welling up in his eyes and I knew I was communing with mystery.

This community was accused of "not having any faith over there" and our celebration of the sacraments and the Eucharist were suspect, because institutional Catholicism demands that we can only come to the truth through the

divinely appointed brokers, totally submissive to their doctrines and correct formulas - the opposite of course is more likely to be the truth.

For it is clear from the gospel that the poor, the disadvantaged, the victims of injustice, the differently abled, all those excluded on the grounds of gender/sexual preference are the very ones that the historical Jesus welcomed to his table time and time again.

To paraphrase Dominic Crossan, "The last supper never happened but it is always happening".

So on Tuesday I understood what Crossan meant and that I didn‟t have to explain my Theological difference to Michael or to anyone about the Eucharist as given to us by the divinely appointed brokers, with their demand for validity, that we use the right formula for Baptism or only the ordained Priest has the power to make Jesus present in the Eucharist.

I don‟t have to fall into that trap anymore because I now know where to find a truly valid experience of Eucharist/communion…

In some cosmic sense, I believe that a true early Christian sense of fellowship, love and social earnestness are expressed above in what I feel might be called a living gospel – good news – by and for the people of God in a small distant community.

It is stories like the above that sparked the early Christian movement hearing stories from a distance that they believed, absorbed into their lives and began to commune with the energy of Jesus, a gift of God, of himself, to humanity.

Christianity needs a rebirth of spirit and outlook and focus.

Twenty first century western culture is corrupt - is as bankrupt of values and love as any of the grand totalitarian regimes, new man made religions, that failed in the recent history of the last century.

The words of Jesus did not destroy the Roman Empire. When the dust settles on fallen empires, the words of Jesus persist in the hearts of the faithful and the Word lives on.

Real Saints of Australia

Soon to be excommunicated Father Peter Kennedy of St. Mary’s in Exile in Brisbane gets my vote for future sainthood and in his own church. God Bless him!

In any case he would not be the first religious excommunicated by a cracker bishop intent on upholding strict discipline in the ranks. One pending RC saint managed to get herself excommunicated over miscommunication with her bishop in her time.

The above photo of Blessed Mary MacKillop, soon to be the first native born Australian saint, is waiting for her third miracle.

Bathersby, the archbishop, is merely cleaning off his desk before retirement in two years time of old paperwork. Efforts to defrock ahead of the curve Father Kennedy have been going on for over twenty years. Previous bishops have not tried so hard to please the Vatican.

But then this is an old case file on the desk of Cardinal Ratszinger, then John Paul IIs hatchet man in the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Lots of files left on Joe’s desk from the past and into the present. Makes you wonder why they elect somebody so old or was it fear that he knew where too many skeletons are buried or in the closet in the Vatican? Oh well.

Besides Blessed Mary MacKillop, let us not forget Joan of Arc who was excommunicated by the English bishops only to have the black mark taken off her record a few decades later in spiritual or was it political regret? In any case it would have saved a lot of fire wood. It only takes one bishop to excommunicate and, as in Joan of Arc’s case, another bishop not unlike a mere bishop of Rome to rescind an order of excommunication.

The church doesn’t always know the real thing when they see it. I think Peter Kennedy is the real thing. Like the historic model with Joan of Arc, Bathersby and his crowd (including Joe) don’t seem to know Christmas from Bourke Street as they say in parts of Oz.

Mary MacKillop’s nineteenth century RC bishop backed off and rescinded his excommunication. Father Kennedy officially or unofficially in his church will continue his work, his labor, his sheparding in the truest sense of the Message of Jesus and the Christian faith to the members of his congregation.

There is something so stubborn and frontier like in the nature of some Australians to blaze a true path to settlement or to the future that I greatly admire.

Maybe Mary MacKillop’s third miracle to achieve sainthood will have to do with the softening of the stone hearts of the RC hierarchy intent on destroying true good works.

Pax.

British Embassy - Hostages - Iran

I had a momentary flashback to 1979 and the seizing of three hundred American hostages in the American Embassy in Tehran.

The photo above is a documented picture of an American hostage from those days and the guy in the circle is allegedly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his salad days of local Iranian politics.

The headline and words in the CNN piece below did not immediately clarify the situation to me.


Britain blasts arrest of embassy staffers in Iran

The arrest of local staff members at the British Embassy in Iran is "harassment and intimidation of a kind which is quite unacceptable," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Sunday.

"About nine" staffers have been affected, he said, adding that some had already been released.

"We have protested in strong terms directly to the Iranian authorities about the arrests that took place yesterday," but there has been no response, Miliband said.

Iran's government-backed Press TV said earlier on Sunday that eight local British embassy staffers had been seized for their role in the unrest following the disputed presidential elections on June 12.

My main complaint about this piece of “Journalism” above is that it does not fully follow the old rules of newspaper journalism and answer the basics of who, what, how, where and why and being addressed in the first paragraph of the news story.

“Local staff members” does not say if the local staffers are British Citizens or not.

As I usually do, I turned to a British news source to get a fuller, tighter, more professional body of the story and situation.


Iran arrests UK embassy staff

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has angrily refuted allegations that Iranian employees of the British embassy in Tehran played a role in the post-election protests of the past two weeks.

In the latest in a series of spats between the two countries, Iran detained eight or nine local embassy staff for playing a "significant role" in the unrest, which has seen serious clashes between demonstrators and security forces.

Miliband, speaking from a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Corfu, said the government was "deeply concerned" at the arrests. "This is harassment and intimidation of a kind that is quite unacceptable," he said. "We want to see them released unharmed."

The other side, the Iranians, who are not unlike the Chinese in 1971 before Nixon’s visit in 1972 – their dictionaries and handbooks on western protocol are decades out of date.

Words are important. Not everybody on the planet talks urban street. An old fuddy duddy such as myself sent an E-mail to CNN or one of the mainstream media because they had called the actress Loretta Young an actor in her obit when she passed in 2000.

Other people may have decided that actor is good word, not actress, for a female. I do not agree. I thought it disrespectful and or inept on the part of the MSM. Lorette Young lived and displayed her talents in another age in which she was called an actress. Modern day PC words did not fit her obituary. Just because I had not gotten with the new asexual word of “actor”, does not mean that I liked or understood it as part of the obit.

We should do not presume that headlines in an American News Source are correct, or interpreted correctly and or reliable especially when the other side, or its leadership is still in a permanent unmovable 1979 AD western moment frame of mind (like Iran).

I doubt that we can be drawn into another Iranian Hostage situation even though it would suit the Supreme Thug (wearing a so-called mantle of God) and his cronies especially his grape peeling sycophant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I doubt that the “bunker busters” are at this moment on Air Force transports to Israel.

I am mildly concerned that a major story on a major American News source in its opening vagueness might escalate a propaganda war on both sides of this potentially hostile global conflict.

Obama is a lawyer and I expect him to put negotiations first or foremost. If that does not work – well – let’s not go there.

Death of a Legend in La La Land - Michael Jackson

Great artists are allowed their eccentricities.

Without a doubt Michael Jackson was a stellar example of talent and worthy of icon mania. His visuals in music videos, an art form perfected at the height of his career, may be played for a thousand years. I can picture the “Thiller” video being played in space in 3009 AD or on a solar colony near Saturn.

The visual arts in video are sort of like the Greek statues of their day and they stayed around and were imitated and found a place in many a villa in the Roman Empire for centuries after their creation. Man, in his spirit, in his soul, recognizes artistic high watermarks on the common civilization brand. Michael was without a doubt one of those high watermarks of the present western and worldwide culture.

The human race turns on a dime and forgives the eccentricities of great artists. His eccentricities were many to say the least.

I was never fully evolved to accept Michael as the “It” of his generation. My generation was a little bit before in the fifties. I burned out on Rock and Roll in the late fifties as a child of five. I sort of yawned when the Beatles came along and ignored them until I discovered them as Muzak in an elevator in the late seventies. Etc.

Nobody, not even myself, could ignore the energy and creativity and breath of life that MJ’s talent exhibited.

I am somewhat taken aback by the power of the media or music or concerts to transmit that something and indiscernible quality of life of this age, these many short ages overlapping, of rock, pop, punk, metal and so on and so forth. The quality of this age I am not certain of. Only history will tell.

Of men and or women who makes hundreds of millions of dollars and can live in a luxurious bubble world and believe anything they want to and do anything they want to – one thing is certain – they can only believe or do anything for a short time and then there is - Death.

As for Michael, I find it ironic that his last days of life ended in La La Land, Los Angeles, known for its eccentricities and a place with the movie and music industry, a place not totally fixed in everyday reality. His preparations for the “next tour” seemed to be an appropriate, if untimely, place to exit life.

Michael Jackson, The King of Pop, has left the building.

I have to wonder if in the days and weeks and months to follow how many new urban legends and sightings, like that of Elvis, of the elusive, eccentric and talented Mr. Jackson will be created and transmitted by word of mouth and media to accent his recent passing.

RIP