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.
