Friday, January 28, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
State of the Union now draws responses
I have written similar things before, as editorials for various newspapers.
I have written this when Democrats held the White House, and it does not alter my opinion. I have written this when Republicans held the White House. It does not alter my opinion.
I don't believe their should be any "responses" to the State of the Union. Whether it be Democrats responding to George W. Bush, or Republicans responding to Bill Clinton.
In other times, for other addresses, I believe it to be appropriate. Generally, the White House is a political operation, and politics is partisan, and deserves as response.
The State of the Union is different.
Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution says this --
"
Section 3 - State of the Union, Convening Congress
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
The State of the Union is a constitutional requirement of the Office of President. As such, it ought to rise above partisanship.
I take to the blog about it because we now have had two responses to the State of the Union. Michelle Bachman took it upon herself to deliver a Tea Party response.
She should have kept her mouth shut. As the Republican who delivered his party's "response" to the State of the Union should have remained silent.
Under our Constitution, it is the President's responsibility to assess and lay out the State of the Union. For any member of Congress to do so is presumptive. For the members fo both parties who have been doing such responses for years based purely on getting their "side" out because the guy in 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is from the opposite side of the aisle is to me reprehensible.
I think our Presidents of both parties would not turn the State of the Union into a political speech if they didn't have to prepare for some unknown response to be delivered moments later
The Constitution requires this of the President. It doesn't give any one else the job.
Sit down and shut up and listen.
I wish the networks would refuse to run such speeches given that they are either extra-constitutional or unconstitutional. It's a power grab.
A short term solution might be to go back, as we always should, to what the Founding Fathers did. Their example can still guide.
Thomas Jefferson, for all his eloquence on paper, did not like public speaking.
The State of the Union was a report given to Congress. A written report.
Perhaps some president in the future ought to consider having less face time on TV and delivering more information. And if that happens, no one would be there to "respond" to the written state of the union.
Anyway. It shouldn't be this all the time.
http://youtu.be/XyygC0VN9vU
I have written this when Democrats held the White House, and it does not alter my opinion. I have written this when Republicans held the White House. It does not alter my opinion.
I don't believe their should be any "responses" to the State of the Union. Whether it be Democrats responding to George W. Bush, or Republicans responding to Bill Clinton.
In other times, for other addresses, I believe it to be appropriate. Generally, the White House is a political operation, and politics is partisan, and deserves as response.
The State of the Union is different.
Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution says this --
"
Section 3 - State of the Union, Convening Congress
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
The State of the Union is a constitutional requirement of the Office of President. As such, it ought to rise above partisanship.
I take to the blog about it because we now have had two responses to the State of the Union. Michelle Bachman took it upon herself to deliver a Tea Party response.
She should have kept her mouth shut. As the Republican who delivered his party's "response" to the State of the Union should have remained silent.
Under our Constitution, it is the President's responsibility to assess and lay out the State of the Union. For any member of Congress to do so is presumptive. For the members fo both parties who have been doing such responses for years based purely on getting their "side" out because the guy in 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is from the opposite side of the aisle is to me reprehensible.
I think our Presidents of both parties would not turn the State of the Union into a political speech if they didn't have to prepare for some unknown response to be delivered moments later
The Constitution requires this of the President. It doesn't give any one else the job.
Sit down and shut up and listen.
I wish the networks would refuse to run such speeches given that they are either extra-constitutional or unconstitutional. It's a power grab.
A short term solution might be to go back, as we always should, to what the Founding Fathers did. Their example can still guide.
Thomas Jefferson, for all his eloquence on paper, did not like public speaking.
The State of the Union was a report given to Congress. A written report.
Perhaps some president in the future ought to consider having less face time on TV and delivering more information. And if that happens, no one would be there to "respond" to the written state of the union.
Anyway. It shouldn't be this all the time.
http://youtu.be/XyygC0VN9vU
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Acclamation is now out of date?
Three sentences, 10 words.
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
Simple and effective while being, of course, mysterious.
Simply sung at church, and yet instructive.
I went to parochial school through eighth grade and my wife tends to believe that makes my catechism, if not perfect, certainly better than hers. I confess only to having some schooling in it by skilled instructors.
You never know how skilled an instructor is until a lesson comes back, years later, in the most unexpected places, when you aren't thinking about it or anything related to it.
None of them had steel rulers, but you'd never think any of them had any subtlety.
Yet the whole curriculum was designed that way. I didn't figure out until I was a grown man how they had had done what they'd done, and there was indeed some subtlety to it. When the number 12 came up in a math class, we were reminded about the Apostles. Twelve could also be a lesson in subtraction (taking out Judas) and addition (putting back his replacement, maybe throwing in Paul as well, because the man himself said he was an apostle.
So it turns out the 12 Apostles can be at least 14 guys.
They did things like that, but you never knew, until later.
In late 2003, early 2004, I went to the funeral for the mother of a friend of mine up in the mountains of North Carolina. It was, I believe, a Presbyterian service. Despite being in the religious minority as a Catholic for 34 years in South Carolina, I have managed to stay away from many of the other Christian services over the years.
Despite a female minister leading the service for my friend's mother, it seemed similar in some ways.
They even had, I thought, the memorial acclamation, which comes in our services right after the Mystery of Faith.
"Christ has died," they started.
Wanting to participate as much as I could for my friend, I tried to go along. But couldn't.
"Christ HAS risen," they said. "Christ will come again."
That's not the acclamation, not as taught to me in an ENGLISH class at St. Raymond's.
It came up in English class because we were learning verb tenses.
"Christ has died," we were told, is past-tense construction. It is a historical fact., something that happened, happened once, something done and over.
They weren't telling us there were no implications from the Crucifixion, but they were putting an amen to the event itself.
You might sense then the chagrin I had at this funeral when they said "Christ HAS risen."
That's also past tense.
The teacher pointed out the acclamation says Christ IS risen. Present tense. It isn't something that happened. It is something that is still with us in a different way. It is happening, always happening.
And Christ will come again. Future tense.
It's just three sentences, 10 words. But it's important, I found right then without looking for it, in that it created a distinction between being a Catholic and something else.
A more recent turn I took with the acclamation, as constituted above, came as something I consider pure gift. One day, just out of the blue, my then 3-year-old son started stnging it.
He's got a nice voice and we love to hear him sing.
He has has an unfortunate integrity, however, which means will never perform on command. Those times when he kicked my wife while in the womb, she'd call for me to come over and feel for it. And thought we'd beg, he wouldn't kick again for daddy.
You can't ask him to sing most of the time. I don't quite remember when it was, but he just sang, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again."
I'm sure it was close in the week to a Sunday, but I don't think it was on a Sunday.
He did it for a few days, then found something else to do. But he had obviously been paying attention at church and picked up on it.
But it wasn't recently, because I haven't heard THAT acclamation used lately. I've missed a few services for sure, but at the services I've attended, it's always one of the other, longer, clunkier "mysteries of faith."
"Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life, Lord Jesus come in glory," is the one I'm hearing most frequently. There are others. There's one the guitar choir uses at my mother's church that I seem to have a post-traumatic stress disorder block on remembering.
It may be that the acclamations go in and out of season, but to me, the acclamation has been, since I received what I thought was a pretty good Catholic education at an outstanding Catholic school, those three sentences, those 10 words.
My wife is editor of this paper, which will in the new year begin a series for Catholics in the diocese on the revisions they are making to the Missal and the mass. I hope one of the things that will be explained is why "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again," is not listed in among the acceptable acclamations we will recite in Mass.
I know there are some who are "opposed" to the revisions and the "new" missal. I know the counterargument is that Vatican II wasn't supposed to change what we say at Mass, just allow us to say it in the vernacular.
I only write this to say that those three sentences, those 10 words seem to capture the essence of the acclamation in plain, simple, language, language that a 3-year-old can remember and on his own sing, language that can be "multi-purposed" to have a dash of grammar along with a pinch of cathechism.
So I'd really like to know why it's going.
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
Simple and effective while being, of course, mysterious.
Simply sung at church, and yet instructive.
I went to parochial school through eighth grade and my wife tends to believe that makes my catechism, if not perfect, certainly better than hers. I confess only to having some schooling in it by skilled instructors.
You never know how skilled an instructor is until a lesson comes back, years later, in the most unexpected places, when you aren't thinking about it or anything related to it.
None of them had steel rulers, but you'd never think any of them had any subtlety.
Yet the whole curriculum was designed that way. I didn't figure out until I was a grown man how they had had done what they'd done, and there was indeed some subtlety to it. When the number 12 came up in a math class, we were reminded about the Apostles. Twelve could also be a lesson in subtraction (taking out Judas) and addition (putting back his replacement, maybe throwing in Paul as well, because the man himself said he was an apostle.
So it turns out the 12 Apostles can be at least 14 guys.
They did things like that, but you never knew, until later.
In late 2003, early 2004, I went to the funeral for the mother of a friend of mine up in the mountains of North Carolina. It was, I believe, a Presbyterian service. Despite being in the religious minority as a Catholic for 34 years in South Carolina, I have managed to stay away from many of the other Christian services over the years.
Despite a female minister leading the service for my friend's mother, it seemed similar in some ways.
They even had, I thought, the memorial acclamation, which comes in our services right after the Mystery of Faith.
"Christ has died," they started.
Wanting to participate as much as I could for my friend, I tried to go along. But couldn't.
"Christ HAS risen," they said. "Christ will come again."
That's not the acclamation, not as taught to me in an ENGLISH class at St. Raymond's.
It came up in English class because we were learning verb tenses.
"Christ has died," we were told, is past-tense construction. It is a historical fact., something that happened, happened once, something done and over.
They weren't telling us there were no implications from the Crucifixion, but they were putting an amen to the event itself.
You might sense then the chagrin I had at this funeral when they said "Christ HAS risen."
That's also past tense.
The teacher pointed out the acclamation says Christ IS risen. Present tense. It isn't something that happened. It is something that is still with us in a different way. It is happening, always happening.
And Christ will come again. Future tense.
It's just three sentences, 10 words. But it's important, I found right then without looking for it, in that it created a distinction between being a Catholic and something else.
A more recent turn I took with the acclamation, as constituted above, came as something I consider pure gift. One day, just out of the blue, my then 3-year-old son started stnging it.
He's got a nice voice and we love to hear him sing.
He has has an unfortunate integrity, however, which means will never perform on command. Those times when he kicked my wife while in the womb, she'd call for me to come over and feel for it. And thought we'd beg, he wouldn't kick again for daddy.
You can't ask him to sing most of the time. I don't quite remember when it was, but he just sang, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again."
I'm sure it was close in the week to a Sunday, but I don't think it was on a Sunday.
He did it for a few days, then found something else to do. But he had obviously been paying attention at church and picked up on it.
But it wasn't recently, because I haven't heard THAT acclamation used lately. I've missed a few services for sure, but at the services I've attended, it's always one of the other, longer, clunkier "mysteries of faith."
"Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life, Lord Jesus come in glory," is the one I'm hearing most frequently. There are others. There's one the guitar choir uses at my mother's church that I seem to have a post-traumatic stress disorder block on remembering.
It may be that the acclamations go in and out of season, but to me, the acclamation has been, since I received what I thought was a pretty good Catholic education at an outstanding Catholic school, those three sentences, those 10 words.
My wife is editor of this paper, which will in the new year begin a series for Catholics in the diocese on the revisions they are making to the Missal and the mass. I hope one of the things that will be explained is why "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again," is not listed in among the acceptable acclamations we will recite in Mass.
I know there are some who are "opposed" to the revisions and the "new" missal. I know the counterargument is that Vatican II wasn't supposed to change what we say at Mass, just allow us to say it in the vernacular.
I only write this to say that those three sentences, those 10 words seem to capture the essence of the acclamation in plain, simple, language, language that a 3-year-old can remember and on his own sing, language that can be "multi-purposed" to have a dash of grammar along with a pinch of cathechism.
So I'd really like to know why it's going.
Monday, January 17, 2011
The fierce urgency of now
This is an editorial I wrote when I was at The People-Sentinel in Barnwell S.C. a while back. Adapted and ran it when I was in Chester.
It's about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"The fierce urgency of now"
Those are words buried amidst the speech Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave in Washington, D.C. People remember the speech he gave that day. He called it "The Dream," and it's a dream shared by many.
King ended his speech in rousing fashion, detailing his dream and his hopes, a vision of a society free of the sin that is the ignorance of racial bigotry.
He ended his speech looking forward. But in his speech, he did something important, and looked back. As American's forefathers did when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, King listed the wrongs suffered by black men and women at the hands of slavery.
Some would say it is dangerous to dwell too much on the past, but King answered that as well, and looked at the present state of his people.
He also listed the wrongs being done to black Americans at the hands of segregation.
"We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now," he said. "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy."
Things were better, no doubt, for Dr. King than they had been for his forefathers. But better is not always good. Life for black men and women is no doubt better today than it was for Dr. King when he gave that speech.
But hatred and blind fear brought on by skin color still thrive in this society.
Every time you think you have prejudice defeated, it rears its ugly head somewhere else.
Decades have passed since that wonderful day when Dr. King shared with us his vision of the future, yet we are still trapped in the fierce urgency of now.
Some called King a prophet for justice. Others called him a troublemaker. Perhaps a prophet and a troublemaker can be the same thing. Whenever Samuel went to see King Saul or Nathan went to see King David, the kings usually were about to catch it.
The words of our most recent prophet stay with us, exposing the sin of inequity. We are still in the heart of the fierce urgency of now. We must learn to live with each other, and because he was indeed a prophet, King gave us a vision of the future to guide us.
"I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," he said.
"And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God's children — black me and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants — will be able to join hands and sing in the worlds of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.'"
Some grumble about taking just a day to honor a man who said such stirring things. We grumble about it also.
It doesn't seem like quite enough..
It's about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"The fierce urgency of now"
Those are words buried amidst the speech Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave in Washington, D.C. People remember the speech he gave that day. He called it "The Dream," and it's a dream shared by many.
King ended his speech in rousing fashion, detailing his dream and his hopes, a vision of a society free of the sin that is the ignorance of racial bigotry.
He ended his speech looking forward. But in his speech, he did something important, and looked back. As American's forefathers did when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, King listed the wrongs suffered by black men and women at the hands of slavery.
Some would say it is dangerous to dwell too much on the past, but King answered that as well, and looked at the present state of his people.
He also listed the wrongs being done to black Americans at the hands of segregation.
"We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now," he said. "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy."
Things were better, no doubt, for Dr. King than they had been for his forefathers. But better is not always good. Life for black men and women is no doubt better today than it was for Dr. King when he gave that speech.
But hatred and blind fear brought on by skin color still thrive in this society.
Every time you think you have prejudice defeated, it rears its ugly head somewhere else.
Decades have passed since that wonderful day when Dr. King shared with us his vision of the future, yet we are still trapped in the fierce urgency of now.
Some called King a prophet for justice. Others called him a troublemaker. Perhaps a prophet and a troublemaker can be the same thing. Whenever Samuel went to see King Saul or Nathan went to see King David, the kings usually were about to catch it.
The words of our most recent prophet stay with us, exposing the sin of inequity. We are still in the heart of the fierce urgency of now. We must learn to live with each other, and because he was indeed a prophet, King gave us a vision of the future to guide us.
"I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," he said.
"And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God's children — black me and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants — will be able to join hands and sing in the worlds of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.'"
Some grumble about taking just a day to honor a man who said such stirring things. We grumble about it also.
It doesn't seem like quite enough..
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