Barry Hudock's Blog, page 31

Romero’s cause: time to get things moving

This is promising and not at all surprising. Catholic News Service is reporting today some interesting comments made by the official promoter of the sainthood cause of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero.  Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, having emerged just hours earlier from a meeting with Pope Francis, announced in a homily, “Today … the cause for the beatification of Archbishop Romero was unblocked.”

He didn’t elaborate further and neither did his office later in the day. So it’s unclear what the cause being “unblocked” refers to or how it was ”blocked” prior to now.

Last year, on the anniversary of Archbishop Romeo’s death, I linked to a Vatican Insider article that included this, on the occasion of Pope Benedict’s visit to Mexico and Cuba:

By coincidence, the last time that Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the unforgettable Salvadoran pastor was on his flight to Brazil in May 2007 for his first and – up to now – only apostolic visit to a Latin American country. This time, during the traditional high-altitude meeting with journalists, a French envoy enquired about the process of Romero’s beatification, whose diocesan phase concluded in 1996. The Pope replied with a brief apologia for the slain bishop, describing him as “a great witness of the faith” and recalling his “truly incredible” death before the altar. He made no reference to the category of martyrdom, but said very clearly that the person of Romero “is worthy of beatification.” Incredibly, those words which were spoken by the Pope before dozens of cameras and dictaphones, were removed from the official version of the interview published by Vatican media.

Five years since that astonishing textual edit,  the Roman phase of the beatification process has ground to a halt. Bishop Vincenzo Paglia of Terni is acting as postulator before the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. And at the Vatican dicastery, the position of the relator of the cause has been entrusted to the French Dominican Daniel Ols, who served the same function for the Blessed John Paul II. But the theologians and historians of the Congregation have not even begun to lay their hands on the material gathered during the diocesan phase.

Looks like Pope Francis shares Pope Benedict’s favorable impression of Romero, but has the will to see to it that the cause’s time of languishing come to an end. I interpret Paglia’s comments to mean that the Pope told Paglia that Romero’s cause has waited too long. It’s time to move things along.

Why canonize Romero? Because he offers a luminous modernday witness to the solidarity of God with people living in poverty and the vocation of the church to share that solidarity, a solidarity that Romero himself shared unto death.

Kind coverage from the St. Cloud Times

There was a nice article in the St. Cloud Times yesterday featuring me and the new book — though I warn you, the opening lines are dreadfully and embarrassingly overstated. (I feel like I owe an apology to the many wonderful people who really do embrace the poor in important and beautiful ways by the way they live!)

A snippet (not from the opening, so as not to induce any eye-rolling):

“One reason Catholic social teaching is interesting is because so many people today insist on being die-hard ‘conservative’ or die-hard ‘liberal.’ And if that’s what you’re into, Catholic social teaching is going to be frustrating, because it’s neither and it’s both,” he said.

“It’s anti-abortion and pro-environment. It’s about the value of family life and fighting unjust structures. It’s human rights and income redistribution. There’s no box it fits into.”

My thanks to the folks at the Times, who were a treat to work with.

American human rights abuses

The New York Times published a report this week on the release of a major new investigation that confirms that the United States government has in recent years engaged in torture of detainees in custody. The techniques in question, the report notes, are similar to acts that have also been “prosecuted in the United States or denounced as torture by American officials when used by other countries.”

A few snippets:

A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The sweeping, 577-page report says that while brutality has occurred in every American war, there never before had been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.”

…

The use of torture, the report concludes, has “no justification” and “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.” The task force found “no firm or persuasive evidence” that these interrogation methods produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. While “a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information,” much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says.

…

The core of the report, however, may be an appendix: a detailed 22-page legal and historical analysis that explains why the task force concluded that what the United States did was torture. It offers dozens of legal cases in which similar treatment was prosecuted in the United States or denounced as torture by American officials when used by other countries.

This is not just history we’re talking about here. It seems remarkable that there are still prisoners at Guantánamo, some there for more than a decade without ever having been charged with a crime or receiving a trial! Many of them are currently engaged in a long and dangerous hunger strike for the sole purpose of reminding us that they’re there.

Kudos to the organizations and individuals who participated in last week’s National Day of Action against the detention and to call for Guantanamo to be closed. The Tikkun blog offers some helpful advice on ways we can continue to speak up about it. My emails to President Obama, our two Minnesota Senators, and the House Representative for the district in which I live all went out this morning.

I mention each of these issues in chapter 6 of Faith Meets World, as human rights problems that demand attention here in the United States.  How can we presume to preach to the world about human rights and human dignity when we’re guilty ourselves of these actions?

5 Great Reads

You know what it’s like to read something great and want to share it with someone or anyone. Here are five articles that I’ve come across recently that deserve your time. Links to full text and a brief snippet from each included.

“Franz Jägerstätter’s widow, ‘a warm, gentle soul,’ dies at 100″ (National Catholic Reporter, 4/8/13): Tom Roberts on the wife of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, a hero of Catholic social teaching

“She looks like Georgia O’Keefe,” [Fr. John] Dear wrote, “has the sparkling eyes of Mother Teresa, a warm, gentle soul with an infectious joy and loving kindness. She carries herself with humility, a hint of shyness. But beneath lies strength, a solid faith, deep peace, towering Gospel conviction. She stands, to my mind, as much a saint as her martyred husband. After Franz died, she took up his job as sacristan and set about to raise their three girls and keep his memory alive.”

“Why the disconnect between recovery and poverty?” (Our Sunday Visitor, 4/21/13): William Bole interviews Professor Charles M. A. Clark on how American tax and economic policies favor the fortunate few

Even economic growth doesn’t benefit the poor like it used to, according to Clark, who teaches economics at St. John’s. He noted that for decades after World War II, rising tides lifted all boats. Incomes at the economy’s lower rungs grew even faster than those at the top. But that trend was upended in the 1980s. Now, Clark said: “The trickle-down effect has clearly stopped.”

“Pope Francis gets his ‘oxygen’ from the slums” (National Catholic Reporter, 4/7/13): John Allen, Jr., on Jorge Mario Bergogio’s “pastoral revolution” in in Buenos Aires

According to Fr. Juan Isasmendi, who lives and works in one of the villas, this is where the future Pope Francis filled his lungs with the “oxygen” he needed to think about what the church ought to be.

There are roughly 20 of these slums in Buenos Aires, often just a block or so away from gleaming high-rise office towers and luxury apartment buildings. Bergoglio’s pastoral revolution was to hand-pick a cadre of especially strong, dedicated priests not just to visit the villas but to live and work here, sharing the lives of the people down to the last detail.

“Do This In Memory of Me” (America, 4/22/13): Robert Imbelli on the primacy of Christ in the teaching of Vatican II

The thrust of these reflections has been that, deeper than the recovery of the universal call to holiness, there is a still more radical and energizing ressourcement: the return to the unique source, who is Jesus Christ. This renewed realization of the primacy of Christ, discovered not merely by repeating preconciliar formulas, but by beginning to fashion a more existential and experiential Christological language, constitutes the true spirit of the council, permeating its documents but always pointing beyond them to the reality of the inexhaustible mystery of Christ himself, the light of the nations.

“A Plea for Mercy for Kermit Gosnell” (First Things blog, 4/14/13): Robert George urges pro-lifers to request that a heinous killer be spared the death penalty

If our plea for mercy moves the heart of a man who cruelly murdered innocent babies, the angels in heaven will rejoice. But whether it produces that effect or not, we will have shown all who have eyes to see and ears to hear that our pro-life witness is truly a witness of love—love even of our enemies, even of those whose appalling crimes against innocent human beings we must oppose with all our hearts, minds, and strength. In a profoundly compelling way, we will have given testimony to our belief in the sanctity of all human life.

Publication day! Get a free copy of FAITH MEETS WORLD

That sound of trumpets you hear is marking the publication of Faith Meets World: The Gift and Challenge of Catholic Social Teaching. Okay, maybe you don’t hear them, and that’s okay. But I do. The book is now available!

My copies arrived last night, and as any author will tell you, holding your own new book in your hands for the first time is a momentous thing. If ebooks ever completely replace paper, that will be one experience lost that will leave society impoverished. (Okay, a little hyperbole, but only a little.) My big thanks to the good folks at Liguori Publications for all their good work on it. It looks great.

To celebrate a little, I want to send a free copy to five people. Want to be one of them?

All you have to do is agree to post a review of the book on Amazon.com. You don’t have to promise me you’ll rave about it. You don’t even have to pinky-swear you’ll be nice. Just read it and be honest about what you think. That’s it.

If you’d like to take me up on that, send me an email to barryhudock[at]gmail.com and say so. (No family or co-workers, please. Wouldn’t be kosher.) Include the shipping address, of course.

Free copies go only to the first five respondents. Thanks for considering it!

In good company: Commonweal’s anthology on Catholic social teaching

When Commonweal magazine first published David Carroll Cochran’s article “Plutocracy or Democracy? How Bad Policies Brought Us a New Gilded Age” last year, I found myself printing it out and marking it up with my highlighter. I also shared it with a few friends and eventually sent David an email to thank him for his fine work.

So imagine my delight to find my own work sharing a place with his, in a new Kindle e-book anthology of Commonweal articles called Commonweal on Catholic Social Teaching. My article, “True Then, Truer Now: Sollicitudo Rei Socialis Turns Twenty-Five,” appears with David’s and ten other fine previously published pieces (most of which are otherwise available online only to Commonweal subscribers).

The anthology also includes work by Daniel Finn, Charles R. Morris, Mary Jo Bane, Eugene McCarraher, Rembert G. Weakland, Charles Michael Andres Clark, David Carroll Cochran, David J. O’Brien, and Angus Sibley. Inside readers will find fascinating exploration of and reflection upon Pope Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate, Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, the American bishops’ Economic Justice for All, the American economy and politics, and capitalism.

If you’re like me, you’ve already read some of them, but missed others. Either way, it’s great to have them all in one place and available inexpensively to non-subscribers, and it’s a heck of an honor to be included among them. The anthology is available here. (Other new Commonweal anthologies available are Commonweal on Contemporary Theologians and Commonweal on the Vatican.)

Now in Our Sunday Visitor: my article on Pope John XXIII’s peace and human rights encyclical, Pacem in Terris

This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Pope John XXIII’s historic encyclical, Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”), published April 11, 1963.

The document is historic for many reasons. Consider the list:

It was the first papal encyclical to be addressed not just to Catholic bishops or all Catholics, but to “all people of good will.” (This shift was every bit as significant at the time as some of the changes in style that we currently see Pope Francis offering, and it’s now fairly standard practice for papal encyclicals.)
It was written in the months following the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was terrifying moment in 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war and which Good Pope John had a hand in bringing to peaceful resolution. (Time magazine named him Man of the Year just months later.) His credibility as peacemaker was huge, and he chose to capitalize on this with an encyclical on peace.
It was written when the Pope knew (but the world did not) that he was dying of cancer. It was his final statement to the Church and the world. He died less than three months after its publication.
It was also published during the Second Vatican Council and had a significant impact on the work and the teaching of that Council.
It marked a dramatic shift in Catholic teaching. A century earlier, someone speaking about human rights as Pope John did in this encyclical was likely to be labeled a heretic.
Fifty years later, it remains the most complete statement there is by the Catholic Church about human rights. It set the stage for the human rights activism of Pope John Paul II, who became one of the world’s foremost voices of his time in defense of the rights of all people.

Wow, that’s an encyclical that’s worth a second look!

That’s what you’ll find in a new article I’ve written that appears in the new issue of Our Sunday Visitor. The article’s available online only to subscribers. But OSV has kindly provided a .pdf of the article as it appears in the issue and given permission to attach it here.  Click here to open it: Pacem in Terris anniversary, OSV

Now in Our Sunday Visitor: my article on Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris

This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Pope John XXIII’s historic encyclical, Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”), published April 11, 1963.

The document is historic for many reasons. Consider the list:

It was the first papal encyclical to be addressed not just to Catholic bishops or all Catholics, but to “all people of good will.” (This shift was every bit as significant at the time as some of the changes in style that we currently see Pope Francis offering, and it’s now fairly standard practice for papal encyclicals.)
It was written in the months following the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was terrifying moment in 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war and which Good Pope John had a hand in bringing to peaceful resolution. (Time magazine named him Man of the Year just months later.) His credibility as peacemaker was huge, and he chose to capitalize on this with an encyclical on peace.
It was written when the Pope knew (but the world did not) that he was dying of cancer. It was his final statement to the Church and the world. He died less than three months after its publication.
It was also published during the Second Vatican Council and had a significant impact on the work and the teaching of that Council.
It marked a dramatic shift in Catholic teaching. A century earlier, someone speaking about human rights as Pope John did in this encyclical was likely to be labeled a heretic.
Fifty years later, it remains the most complete statement there is by the Catholic Church about human rights. It set the stage for the human rights activism of Pope John Paul II, who became one of the world’s foremost voices of his time in defense of the rights of all people.

Wow, that’s an encyclical that’s worth a second look!

That’s what you’ll find in a new article I’ve written that appears in the new issue of Our Sunday Visitor. The article’s available online only to subscribers. But OSV has kindly provided a .pdf of the article as it appears in the issue and given permission to attach it here.  Click here to open it: Pacem in Terris anniversary, OSV

Now in U.S. Catholic: my profile of St. Vincent de Paul USA President Sheila Gilbert

For as long as I can remember, my dad has been an active member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society (SVdP) at the parish where I grew up. For decades he has participated in, and at times directed, that organization’s efforts, on the local level, to provide food and financial help to people living in poverty.

So it was a thrill for me to be able to interview Sheila Gilbert, SVdP’s current president in the United States. She also happens to be its first ever female president. (When I was a kid, only men could join St. Vincent de Paul. That changed over 25 years ago.) My interview happened in preparation for a profile of her that I prepared for U.S. Catholic.

One of the most notable things about Sheila’s work is that she is intent on expanding SVdP’s scope beyond its traditional charitable relief efforts into additional efforts to address the systemic causes of poverty. In others words, she wants to do more than help people survive poverty (important and essential as that is); she would like to see SVdeP help people work their way out of poverty. And she’s giving up what she expected to be her quiet retirement years to do it.

My profile of Sheila Gilbert appears in the April issue of U.S. Catholic. It’s not available online (though some other articles from the issue are, here), but the magazine has kindly provided a .pdf of the article as it appeared in the issue and given me permission to attach it here.  Click here to open it: Sheila Gilbert profile, U.S. Catholic

Thank you, Senator Rubio

This comes today in an email from Catholic Charities USA:

Tell Senator Marco Rubio ‘Thank You” for His Work with the Gang of Eight

Dear Supporter of immigration reform,

Organizations opposed to reform are flooding U.S. Senator Marco Rubio’s office with calls, messages and faxes attacking him for his support of immigration reform.  A recent Washington Post article reported that one group and “its members have inundated the office of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) with 100,000 faxes.”

Senator Rubio needs to hear from people throughout the country that they are looking for his leadership in the Senate on this issue and that he must continue to support immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented.

Call Senator Rubio’s office at 202-224-3041 or send him an email at http://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-senator-rubio?p=Contact and thank him for his outstanding work on the Gang of Eight and encourage him to continue with his immigration reform efforts.

Looks like something worth acting on. I have.