Terrorism

Since September 11, 2001, any instance of violence we don’t like is called terrorism. This practice is manipulative, but it has become the 21st century’s propaganda weapon of choice. This unfortunate trend seems to have been started by the United States, but the technique has been adopted by friends and foes alike.

In Syria, for example, we viewed the insurgents, even when we didn’t like all of them, as revolutionaries or freedom-fighters. The Syrian government, however, repeated called the fighters terrorists. The U.S. government saw this charge as ridiculous, but it was merely reaping the rhetorical harvest of the propaganda seeds it had sown.

I write this now because some people in and out of government are calling the downing of a commercial airliner over Ukraine an act of terrorism. To begin with, the circumstances of the disaster are not yet clear, so the conclusion—any conclusion—is premature. More significantly, however, it is unlikely that anyone had a motive to bring down the plane. The most likely explanation is that Russians or pro-Russian rebels downed the aircraft with a Russian missile, having mistaken it for a Ukrainian military transport. That is, the incident is linkly collateral damage resulting from ongoing warfare.

“Terrorism” has become an epithet used without careful thinking and without integrity. It’s time to become more careful in our use of the term

Nuance Power PDF Advanced Bug Fixed

The bug I discovered after I installed Nuance Power PDF Advanced on my computer appears to have been fixed.  I reported in an earlier post that PDF files created by the new software often, though not always, put a watermark on pages indicated that the file was produced by a trial version of the program, even though the program was registered and activated.

I have been documenting my interaction with the technical support people at Nuance in my original post. Readers of that post who have not been reading my updates but who are interested in my experience may want to return to that post and read about my experience.

I am inclined to believe that Power PDF Advanced is an excellent program for creating and manipulating PDF files, but I have not systematically examined all its features. Certainly, the software embodies some design decisions different from those I would have made. In any case, Nuance offers a free trial, as well as a money-back guarantee.

The South Carolina Amnesia

A severe outbreak of amnesia has struck the southeastern portion of South Carolina. Epidemiologists have observed that the disorder seems to have affected only former Episcopalians who followed deposed bishop Mark Lawrence out of The Episcopal Church. Continuing Episcopalians are apparently unaffected, and it is unclear whether all erstwhile Episcopalians are vulnerable to the spreading epidemic. The rate of affliction among diocesan and parish leaders, however, is virtually 100 percent.

Evidence of the epidemic is found exclusively in the town of St. George, South Carolina. In particular, the outbreak is observable in the Dorchester County Courthouse, specifically, in the courtroom in which Judge Diane S. Goodstein is presiding over the trial brought against South Carolina Episcopalians by the aforementioned deposed bishop and the congregations that departed The Episcopal Church with him.

Observers have noted that witnesses called by the plaintiffs—clergy and lay leaders of congregations claiming to have left The Episcopal Church and taken real and personal parish property with them—have apparently forgotten that their parishes were once part of the general church and not simply a part of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. Various witnesses, for example, have claimed that “Episcopal” in parish names and on identifying signs did not refer to The Episcopal Church, but only to the fact that their parishes were under the supervision of a bishop. Moreover, these witnesses have forgotten that, in the very recent past and for some time previous, they had exhibited extreme and righteous hostility toward The Episcopal Church because they believed that the church had departed from biblical truth, of which they were in exclusive possession.

The South Carolina amnesia presents with concomitant paranoia. Victims of the affliction have testified that they engaged in various legal maneuvers to “protect” their parishes from the depredations of The Episcopal Church, yet they offer no justification for their fear other than what they view as the undeserved persecution of the former Bishop of South Carolina.

Although there is some disagreement regarding the etiology of the South Carolina epidemic, the consensus epidemiological opinion is that the observed aberrant behavior is the result of the realization that acknowledging that the dispute between Episcopalians and former Episcopalians is theological in nature will result in the civil courts recusing themselves from jurisdiction and deferring to the leadership of The Episcopal Church to resolve the property issues. Thus, the afflicted victims have been driven to the delusional notion that what is at issue is purely a matter of secular property law.

There is some question as to whether Judge Goodstein is also a victim of the epidemic, as she has seemingly forgotten that there might be a more obvious reason for the behavior of the witnesses and that that reason might involve considerations of theology. Perhaps she has only forgotten that judges are supposed to be impartial.

Epidemiologists are hopeful that the South Carolina epidemic will be contained when the defense is allowed to present its case in Judge Goodstein’s courtroom. Not all the observers of the epidemic are so sanguine as to the ultimate outcome, however.

Quinn Out as Canon, In as Interim Cathedral Dean

I was surprised to see this listing in the new directory from the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh:

Apparently, as of July 1, 2014, the Rev. Canon Scott Quinn is no longer Canon to the Ordinary, and the Rev. Tim Hushion, Jr., is no longer Priest-in-Charge at Trinity Cathedral. Quinn, in addition to his long-time position as Rector at Church of the Nativity in Crafton, Pennsylvania, is now Interim Dean of Pittsburgh’s Trinity Cathedral.

To date, there appears to have been no notification by the diocese of this personnel change, not even to Pittsburgh clergy. Yesterday, the cathedral posted a welcome note on its Facebook page, but, as of today, there is no mention of Quinn on the cathedral’s Web site, and Hushion is still listed as Priest-in-Charge.

The health of Trinity Cathedral has been of grave concern to the people of the diocese, particularly in light of the cathedral’s near loss to the schismatic Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. Why is this change seemingly being made under the radar? Personnel changes, particularly one so important, deserve to put publicized. Alas, communication from the diocese continues to be desultory.

The Quinn appointment is particularly interesting from a number of points of view. There has been much dissatisfaction with the fact that the Pittsburgh diocese, which is facing financial difficulties, has been supporting three canons. There has also been dissatisfaction among progressives that all three canons are conservative. Quinn’s performance as Canon to the Ordinary has not always been considered stellar. The move to the cathedral looks like an acknowledgement of the fact. Quinn has spent virtually his entire career in Crafton, something of a suburban backwater. He is hardly an obvious pick for a struggling urban parish.

Bob Duncan had installed the Rev. Cathy Brall at Trinity, probably because he thought she could be coerced into following his lead. He gave her the title of Provost, however, rather than the more conventional title of Dean, a move widely considered a slight. Even after Duncan’s departure, the succession of bishops in Pittsburgh failed to undo the slight. And, particularly after the cathedral dumped its untenable two-diocese experiment, it was assumed that Trinity could not support a dean with a track record suggesting that he or she could make Trinity a going concern. Does the fact that Trinity now has an interim dean mean that it will be looking for a permanent dean, or is the change just about finding a place for Quinn?

Brall, of course, was removed from the cathedral to become Canon Missioner for the diocese. Will she also take on some of the duties of which Scott Quinn has now been relieved?

Stay tuned.

Pittsburgh Bishop OKs Priests Officiating at Same-Sex Marriages

After some delay—see “Bishop Answers Questions, Explains Same-Sex Marriage Delay”—Dorsey McConnell, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, wrote a letter yesterday, July 3, 2014, explaining that priests in the diocese may now officiate at same-sex weddings. His earlier permission to use the Provisional Rite for the Blessing of a Lifelong Covenant authorized by the 2012 General Convention via Resolution A049 has been modified in light of the legalization of same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania resulting from a recent court decision. (The bishop’s revised guidelines are here.)

What held up Bishop McConnell’s pronouncement about same-sex marriage was his concerns—or his chancellor’s concerns—about the legality and canonicality of allowing Pittsburgh priests to marry same-sex couples in church. I didn’t quite understand what the problem or problems were when Andy Roman, the diocesan chancellor, explained the delay at the June meeting of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh. Everything became clear, however, in the letter from the chancellor that the bishop released along with his letter and guidelines.

The chancellor offered the bishop answers to three questions (quoting from the aforementioned letter):

1. What is the source of the civil law authority granted to priests of the Diocese to solemnize a marriage for civil law purposes, and does that source require the marriage to be solemnized using the rite of Holy Matrimony contained in the Book of Common Prayer?
2. Would the use of the Provisional Rite, “I Will Bless You and You Will Be a Blessing,” without modification, in conjunction with execution of the civil law marriage certificate by the priest, serve to solemnize the marriage of a same-sex couple for civil law purposes in Pennsylvania?
3. If you as Bishop Diocesan authorize priests of the Diocese to use their civil law authority to solemnize same-sex marriages for civil law purposes using the Provisional Rite, are you upholding the Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of the Episcopal Church?

Notice that answers to these questions turn both on canon law and civil law in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The answers, then, cannot be universal for Episcopal Church dioceses. Nonetheless, I do think Andy Roman’s analysis is of general interest.

As it happens, Pennsylvania law provides two descriptions of who can perform a marriage and does not specify the exact form of the ceremony. A “general rule” allows “a minister, priest or rabbi of a regularly established church or congregation” to do the job. (What about imams? Who knows.) A separate provision provides that

Every religious society, religious institution or religious organization in this Commonwealth may join persons together in marriage when at least one of the persons is a member of the society, institution or organization, according to the rules and customs of the society, institution or organization.

Perhaps this second provision exists to make it easier from a religious institution to refuse to perform a marriage. If it were the only source of authority for performing a civil same-sex marriage, it would be problematic for Episcopalians, as both the prayer book and Canon I.18 “define Holy Matrimony as between ‘a man and a woman.’” Given the general rule, however, we can forget about this latter provision. An Episcopal priest can perform a same-sex marriage, but it cannot be Holy Matrimony as The Episcopal Church now defines it.

The chancellor’s answer to the second question is lengthy—Andy Roman is very thorough—but he concludes that the use of the provisional rite, without modification, and a marriage license are  pretty much all a priest needs to satisfy both canon and civil law with respect to a (civil) same-sex marriage.

The third question is really whether Bishop McConnell will get into trouble with the church for allowing same-sex marriages to be performed in Pittsburgh churches. This seems a reasonable concern. Resolution A049 clearly anticipated the use of the provisional rite in states where same-sex marriage is legal, and the chancellor concludes, without too much trouble, that the bishop will be on solid ground if he approves same-sex weddings in Episcopal churches.

So, based on the advice of his chancellor, Bishop McConnell will allow diocesan priests to use the provisional rite. The couple, however, must have earlier been married in a civil ceremony or must have a valid marriage license. The provisional rite must be used without modification, except as provided in it own rubrics.

A ceremony following the guidelines provided by Bishop McConnell, then, will certainly effect the marriage of two women or two men. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the United States government will consider them married. (Louisiana and some other states, not so much.) Technically, the church will not consider the couple married in the traditional sense. In practice, I doubt this will make much difference. The couple is blessed in the provisional rite, and that’s about the only benefit of substance a heterosexual couple gets out of a church wedding anyway.

The same-sex couple will not be pronounced—what should they be pronounced, anyway?—husband and wife or married or whatever. But the Pronouncement from the provisional rite should seem just fine:

Inasmuch as N. and N. have exchanged vows of love and fidelity in the presence of God and the Church, I now pronounce that they are bound to one another in a holy covenant,
as long as they both shall live. Amen.

Nuance Screws Up Big Time

I have been using PDF Converter Professional 8 from Nuance Communications, Inc., to create and modify PDF files. Functionally, the program is nearly equivalent to Adobe Acrobat, and the price was considerably more attractive. Recently, Nuance began advertising their latest PDF product, Power PDF Advanced, claiming that it is a significant advance over the earlier product. In large measure, PDF Converter Professional 8 was meeting my needs, but the new product did offer some capabilities that seemed like they might occasionally be useful. With some reservations, I decided to order the new software.

I chose to receive the software on CD, and I was pleased that it arrived quickly via UPS. When I installed the software, I was asked if I wanted to remove PDF Converter Professional 8. With at least a touch of anxiety, I answered that I did. The installation did not go smoothly, and I found my myself having to kill certain running processes manually to complete the process successfully. (Installation was not for the computer novice. Maybe that’s why “Advanced” is part of the program’s name.)

In due time, the program was installed and, seemingly, registered and activated. It appeared to be working fine, though I was having trouble locating functions I regularly used in PDF Converter Professional 8. Then I used Power PDF Advanced to change document properties of a PDF file produced by Word 2010. I was shocked to discover that the file now contained a watermark indicating that it had been produced by a trial version of the software. My immediate thought was that activation had not been done properly, but the About window showed my name and product serial number. I quickly realized that I did not know what the problem was. Moreover, the time was about 7:45 PM, and Nuance technical support closed up shop at 8:00 PM.

I made a telephone call to Nuance in the hope of solving my problem before the Fourth of July holiday and weekend. Thinking that my problem was an activation problem, I pressed the appropriate buttons on my telephone to indicate that to the phone system. Instead of technical support, I reached customer support. That office was closed, but I did get to talk to a real person. I described my problem and was told that it was a known problem. The real person suggested I call the technical support number—that was the actual number I did call—and explained that I should press “1,” rather than “2” at the initial prompt. I did that, and in fact reached someone in technical support.

The technical support person—for convenience, I’ll call him Bob—was also aware of the problem. He first checked registration and activation. Apparently, the product was not properly registered or activated, but Bob was able to fix this once I gave him the product’s serial number. This did not fix my problem, however. We proceeded to apply a workaround intended to fix the problem. It didn’t work.  Forty-five minutes later, having used the Windows Task Manager a couple of times  and rebooted the computer, the problem remained.

I suggested that a product should never have been let out the door with a problem like the one I was encountering; Power PDF Advanced is unusable. I asked, “Do you test your software? Does technical support have to deal with this problem with every user?” Bob assured that not everyone had the problem and that the software people were working on a fix. Apparently, however, Nuance has no idea what is causing the problem. I was asked to download the Microsoft Process Monitor and upload a log file to Nuance. I countered that I should be paid for debugging their software.

Stay tuned. I’ll report how this turns out. Meanwhile, if you’re considering buying Power PDF Advanced, I’d hold off for now.

Update, 7/4/2014, 9:10 AM. After I wrote the above, I thought that perhaps the problem had gone away. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The offending watermark appears in some circumstances but not in others. I have not figured out which is which.

Update, 7/4/2014, 11:45 AM. I downloaded Process Monitor and started it, reproduced the problem, stopped the Process Monitor, saved the log file, compressed the log file, renamed it, uploaded it to an ftp site, and sent e-mail to Nuance. We’ll see what happens next. This isn’t exactly how I meant to spend Independence Day.

Update, 7/4/2014, 12:37 PM. I received a request from Nuance a little while ago for information about my system from the System Information application. That has now been sent. Back to waiting for a fix. Actually, I have to be impressed that someone is working on my problem on July 4.

Update, 7/7/2014, 12:51 PM. Nuance sent e-mail saying they are still working on the problem and asking if I had any more information. I tried creating PDF files various ways with the software and did not see the offending watermark. I wrote back

I now seem unable to reproduce the problem. I tried creating PDF files from various sources. In particular, using the Nuance Create PDF Word Addin does not yield a document with the offending watermark. I am reluctant to conclude that the problem has gone away. What has changed? Any ideas?

Update, 7/8/2014, 2:26 PM. I received another message like the last one: “We are continuing to work on your issue. If you have more information, update your question here:” (This whole sentence was a link.) Nuance also sent a Word file explaining how to remove a Trial watermark. This document ended with this depressing piece of information: “Unfortunately, this is a page by page process, so to clean up a large document you have to do this on every page to clean up an entire document.” Happily, I have not created any long documents with the offending watermark.

Update, 7/11/2014, 4:00 PM. I haven’t heard anything more from Nuance. After I rebooted my computer today, however, I saw a window requesting that I register the software. When I logged into the Nuance site, I found that it already listed my software as registered. (Note that I redacted the serial numbers in the image using a feature of Power PDF Advanced.) Anyway, I reported the anomaly to Nuance.

Update, 7/14/2014, 9:18 AM. Although I thought that the watermark problem might have gone away, it showed up on a page printed from Chrome this morning. I created a PDF file using the Print This button at the bottom of this page. (You can see the resulting file here.) I wrote Nuance about this. I haven’t heard from Nuance since 7/6.

Update, 7/14/2014, 9:32 AM. Just after I wrote Nuance, a popup window informed me of an update to Power PDF Advanced. I installed the hotfix and tried to recreate the problem noted above. The watermark did not appear. I have now written Nuance to ask if the hotfix is intended as a total fix for the problem.

Update, 7/14/2014, 11:09 AM. I received e-mail from Nuance stating that the hotfix is supposed to resolve the problem of the errant watermarks. Nuance has closed the incident. From all I can tell, the bug in Nuance Power PDF Advanced has indeed been fixed, eleven days after I reported it. Clearly, however, I was not the first to notice the problem, so I don’t know just how long it took Nuance to track down and fix the bug.

Some Thoughts in Light of the Hobby Lobby Opinion

The Hobby Lobby decision handed down by the United States Supreme Court on June 30, 2014, has filled my head with reflections on what I consider a terrible decision by the high court. This is a blog, however, not a book, so what follows can only begin to express what I want to say about the court’s opinion.

As might have been expected from our very conservative Supreme Court, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was yesterday decided in favor of Hobby Lobby by a vote of—you guessed it—5 to 4. (The decision is here.)

The effect of the decision is to grant a family-owned, for-profit corporation an exception from the requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to provide all forms of approved birth control to its employees at no cost. The owners of Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts and crafts stores, objected to providing certain kinds of birth control (such as IUDs) because they believe they cause abortions. (The scientific community does not agree with this analysis, by the way.) Members of the Green family, who own Hobby Lobby, are conservative Christians who claimed that their religious freedom was being infringed by the ACA requirement.

The Hobby Lobby decision is not, as some would have it, a victory for freedom of religion. It is, instead, another victory for a malignant individualism that is indifferent, or even hostile, to any sense of community or common good, an individualism that jealously guards its own religious practice while failing to consider the religious sensibilities of others. Rather than settling questions raised by the ACA, the Hobby Lobby opinion threatens to encourage ever more litigation harmful to the body politic. If there is anything positive to be said for the outcome of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, it is perhaps that the decision at least calls attention to bad political decisions of the past whose effects require mitigation.

The Affordable Care Act was intended to make medical care available to all Americans at a reasonable cost. Moreover, it was designed to deliver certain basic medical services, such as immunizations and birth control, at no marginal cost and little effort to assure that such services are utilized. To accomplish these goals—goals that have eluded us for decades—certain burdens have been imposed on individuals and companies, but burdens that seem slight compared with the effects of taxes, environmental regulations, and the like.

The Green family claimed that their religious freedom was being infringed by having to fund, for example, IUDs for their employees, even though they are opposed to abortion for religious reasons. (Somehow it wasn’t considered important that the medical community does not believe that IUDs cause abortions and that IUDs are often inserted for medical reasons other than birth control.)

To the average citizen who pays taxes, registers an automobile, obeys traffic signals, and recycles trash, the Green family claim is ridiculous on the face of it. When a for-profit company does business in the public square, it necessarily has to conduct its business by society’s rules. Thus, for example, a hotel is not allowed to discriminate against potential guests on the basis of their race. As a corporation, various benefits—limited liability and tax advantages—accrue to Hobby Lobby, and society has a right to expect compliance with reasonable restrictions in return. Are not the Greens asking to be treated like individuals when it suits them and as a corporation when that is more convenient? (More on that below.) One might observe that

1.  The medical benefits that the Greens do not want to provide are really compensation for Hobby Lobby workers. Hobby Lobby would be laughed out of court if they did not provide birth control and, at the same time, said that their employees could not obtain birth control with their own earnings. What is the difference?
2. The Greens asked the court to allow them to impose their own (frankly idiosyncratic) religious views on their employees, many of whom, we may reasonably assume, have very different religious opinions. No doubt, many of those employees see birth control less as a right than as an imperitive for the preservation of their own and the earth’s resources.
3. Hobby Lobby exists to earn money. Irrespective of the fact that the Greens are generous with their earnings. Hobby Lobby is not a church or a church-related organization. Their claim on an ACA exemption would be more credible were it a non-profit, which it has not chosen to be. (But see below.)
4. The Greens are not Hobby Lobby. They are members of a human family, as opposed to a corporation. (Again, see below.)

The syllabus of the Supreme Court opinion begins

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) prohibits the “Government [from] substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability” unless the Government “demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”

This gets to the heart of the Supreme Court’s logic.  It goes something like this:

1. Corporations are people.
2. Closely held corporations can be owned by like-minded people, so that their sensibilities can be said to be those of the corporation.
3. The ACA applies to the likes of Hobby Lobby, but, given the above, the birth control requirement imposes a burden on the corporation/owners.
4. Although there is a compelling interest in providing birth control for all women, the government failed to show that requiring Hobby Lobby to do so was not the least restrictive means of achieving the government’s legitimate goals. 

Notice that, without the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)—see the Wikipedia article and the text of the law—the case falls apart. RFRA was passed to right specific wrongs and was passed with virtually no opposition. It is clear, however, that it is a dangerous law that should be repealed or modified. When can one ever prove that a mechanism is the least restrictive possible method of achieving a certain goal? The possible mechanisms, after all, are infinite. Moreover, RFRA does not require a least restrictive solution consistent with other legitimate goals that might affect other parties (women employees of Hobby Lobby, for example).

RFRA, then, is too focused on the religion of individuals and too little on the wider concerns of society. RFRA should be amended or (preferably) repealed. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen. Despite our supposed attachment to the separation of church and state, in practice, we are very solicitous of religion. One effect of this extreme solicitousness is that conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics have been able to make increasingly outrageous religious freedom claims that others, and particularly religious liberals, are reluctant to attack. Significantly, TV news shows showed religious conservatives cheering the Hobby Lobby opinion. Where were the liberal Christians demonstrating against it?

Then there is the corporation as people thing. Most of us know that this idea in intrinsically ridiculous. The notion of corporations as people (though not as “natural persons”) is actually a handy fiction that, without a lot of specific law, allows corporations to do certain things that people do—to enter into contracts, for example. Like RFRA, however, the corporations as people thing needs to be reined in. Our corporate law would be more sensible if corporations were treated as persons only in carefully enumerated situations. The notion that a corporation like Hobby Lobby can have religious beliefs is ridiculous and pernicious.

Some commentators have suggested that closely held corporations are more like church-affiliated institutions such as schools and hospitals, for which the Obama administration has gone out of its way to make accommodations. I’m not sure I see this argument. In any case, the whole mess with the ACA could be avoided by making no special provisions either for churches or church-related institutions. If a public university, say, goes into the general labor market for teachers, why should it not have to abide by the same labor laws as everyone else? If the institution argues that providing birth control violates its moral principles, how is this different from a pacifist’s refusing to pay income tax because it supports the military? Operating in society has obligations. Besides, as I suggested earlier, medical insurance provided by an employer is really pay that the employee has earned. Perhaps an exception could be made for a church if (1) it has taken a public stand that birth control (or some form of it) is immoral, and (2) the employee is a member of the church. In general, religious freedom is not a licence to impose your religious views on others.

The real solution, of course, is to have a single payer for health care. It has never made sense to link health care to employment. (Even unemployed people get sick.) Historically, employer health insurance has been provided as a way of attracting employees and because workers tend to be healthy and can have premiums deducted from their pay. Obamacare is what it is because Democrats needed the support of insurance companies—an unfortunate but, in a sense, successful strategy—and wanted the support of Republicans—which, of course, didn’t happen.

So, here is my to-do list for a better society:

1. Implement a single-payer, unified health system.
2. Repeal RFRA.
3. Eliminate the treatment of corporations as people wherever possible (including considerations of free speech in political conversations).
4. Reform non-profit laws.

I am not, of course, holding my breath.

Correcting the Record

The media have a big effect on how we view the world. Even when striving for objectivity—objectivity is a very slippery concept—bias can creep into a reporter’s work unbidden.

Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was the subject of many news stories, and I found one of them particularly irritating. It was the lead story on the 3:01 PM EDT news summary on NPR.

The report began: “In a major victory for religious groups … .” The decision, of course, was a victory only for some religious groups (and not a religious group to which I belong). I promptly wrote a note to the NPR Ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos. Here is the text of my e-mail message:

The latest hourly news summary began with a story of the Hobby Lobby decision with these words: “In a major victory for religious groups … .” This is a biased point of view. The victory is one for right-wing Evangelicals. I can assure you that many, probably most, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Jews, UCC members, and members of other more liberal (and, in fact, mainstream) denominations believe that the Hobby Lobby decision by the Supreme Court is a disaster for the body politic. NPR needs to learn that “religion” does not mean simply “conservative Christian.” 

I have not yet received a reply.

Staging the Easter Vigil

As I have written a number of times, the Great Vigil of Easter is my favorite church service and the highlight of the church year. In 2001, I wrote “An Easter Vigil Memoir,” describing how I first encountered the vigil at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. One of my poems in “Haiku Meditations on the Church Year” concerns the vigil:

Easter Vigil

We start in darkness.
New light proclaims the Good News—
Jesus is risen!

For many years, I was Audio-Visual Coördinator, choir member, and secretary of the Worship Commission at St. Paul’s. This led me to become the unofficial stage manager (and keeper of the corporate memory) for the Easter Vigil, a particularly useful function as clergy came and went. In this capacity, I developed and updated yearly an annotated copy of the liturgy to help with vigil planning.

While performing some much-needed file maintenance the other day, I ran across my collection of planning documents for the vigil. For the benefit of others looking to offer an Easter Vigil at their church or to perfect what they have been doing, I am posting the 2008 edition of my planning document, unchanged except for minor edits. (Our present rector, who came to St. Paul’s in the fall of 2008, simplified lighting of services generally and largely discarded the procedures developed at the church over the years. I resigned my Audio-Visual Coördinator position and left the Worship Commission. I have not been involved in vigil planning since then and have taken the opportunity to visit other parishes to see how they run the service.)

In reading “Planning for the Great Vigil of Easter,” keep in mind that St. Paul’s has a very capable lighting system that allows for multiple lighting settings, each with a variable fade. Doug Starr, who is mentioned in the document, is our organist and choirmaster, as well as an excellent singer.

Here are some additional notes:

1. St. Paul’s has a huge wooden stand for thee Paschal Candle. Its normal position is near the font, on the opposite side from the pulpit. We have been moving the stand to a position near the pulpit, so that readings can be read near the candle. Churches with more modest stands for their Pascal Candle need not agonize over placement as we have at St. Paul’s.
2. The congregation can gather outside the church and follow the Paschal Candle into the church, or people can be seated inside at the beginning of the service. Each scheme has its advantages and disadvantages. Having the congregation walk into the church together allows a better view of the kindling of the first fire. It doesn’t work for the handicapped, however, and is a bit chaotic for my taste. A carefully orchestrated procession that progressively lights candles from the rear of the church to the front is very dramatic.
3. There are many possibilities for lighting the fire. I prefer to do it at the back of the nave, but that needs to be done carefully. Some churches actually create a bonfire outside. This can be a bit scarey if it’s windy, but it adds a certain primitive excitement to the service.
4. St. Paul’s has generally distributed non-dripless candles to worshipers and offered only a round piece of paper for protection. Worshipers’ attention is thereby diverted to the task of avoiding being burned by hot wax. This year, I attended a vigil at a Lutheran church that used dripless candles in a plastic holder that allowed no wax to drop. No artificial lighting was needed before the Easter acclamation.
5. My arguing for the use of all nine readings during the vigil became a standing joke in Worship Commission meetings. More readings meant a longer service, of course, and this fact was exacerbated by Doug’s insistence on using a significant piece of music—hymn, anthem, etc.—along with each reading. Using brief organ interludes could save time while maintaining a contemplative atmosphere. (Is there some composer out there who would like to write of set of brief organ meditations keyed to each of the nine readings?)
6. The most distinctive feature of former Easter Vigils at St. Paul’s was the use of a second procession, in which clergy are vested as they would be for a normal Eucharist. This is very festive and is sorely missed of late. The altar party disappears from the chancel almost invisibly as Altar Guild members prepare the church for the Eucharist. The choir, which begins the service in the chancel, does not participate in the second procession.
7. Also distinctive is the dialogue involving the knock at the nave door. (See note on page 294.) I cannot experience this without tearing up.

I hope my notes will be helpful. I would love to hear about the experiences of other congregations with the Easter Vigil.

Bishop Answers Questions, Explains Same-Sex Marriage Delay

More than 70 people attended the Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh (PEP) event in the parish hall of Calvary Church last night to hear and question Bishop of Pittsburgh Dorsey McConnell. Starting time was 7:30 PM, but the program was preceded by refreshments and lively conversation among the early arrivals.

Joan Gundersen, one of PEP’s vice presidents, presided. After an opening prayer, she explained that the bishop had a particular topic he wanted to address and that we would discuss that matter before moving to a question-and-answer session.

What Bishop McConnell wanted first to explain was where the diocese stands in light of the recent court decision declaring the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional and Governor Tom Corbett’s announcement that the decision would not be appealed. The topic was a welcome one for the audience, as there had been some consternation over the bishop’s failure to at least indicate his approval of the altered legal landscape. Bishop of Northwest Pennsylvania Sean Rowe, who is also provisional bishop of the Diocese of Bethlehem had made such a statement, yet the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette could only report that Bishop McConnell “plans to consult with clergy and lay leaders on the implications of the court ruling.” That had led to fears that the path from same-sex blessings to same-sex marriage in churches might be a long one. The bishop, in response to a question later in the evening, apologized for the delay in clarifying the status of same-sex marriage in the diocese, explaining that he is not a “let’s-make-a-statement kind of guy.” (Unfortunately, given the recent history of our diocese, we tend to be no-news-must-be-bad-news kind of Episcopalians.)

In any case, the delay in announcing a policy about same-sex marriages is the result of legal ambiguity, as Chancellor Andy Roman explained. It is important that any such marriage conforms both to Pennsylvania law and to Episcopal Church canons. The chancellor is consulting with his counterparts in other dioceses in an effort to avoid unintended consequences, such as couples learning years after the ceremony that they aren’t really married at all.

I had planned to discuss the perceived problems with conducting same-sex marriages in the diocese, but, in the cold light of day, I don’t think I understand them, particularly as regards the civil law. It seems clear that 2012 General Convention Resolution A049 allows bishops to authorize clergy to perform same-sex marriages in states where marriage equality exists, but it is equally clear that what would be done thereby is not, for the church at least, “marriage” as we find it in the prayer book and in Canon I.18. (Both speak of a man and a woman.) Stay tuned; the bishop and the chancellor are trying to resolve the perceived problems as quickly as possible.

After some further discussion on the mechanics of implementing same-sex marriages in the diocese, we moved on to other issues. PEP had advertised the meeting as being about the state of the diocese, but Bishop McConnell did not give a state-of-the-diocese address but merely responded to questions. The main questions had been developed by the PEP board and were asked by Dr. Gundersen. The bishop’s responses led to other questions from the floor, however.

The first question concerned divisions in the diocese. What are the greatest dangers and the greatest signs of hope?

The bishop suggested that the most serious divisions are between large and small parishes, between urban and rural parishes, between rich and poor parishes, and so forth. We do not, he asserted, want to go through what we went through earlier. He said that, under the “previous regime,” parishes got “siloed.” To improve communications, he has established The Listening Committee (TLC, cute), which has been going to parishes and simply listening to what people have to say. About a third of the parishes have been “listened to.” Bishop McConnell indicated that one of the findings of TLC is that some of the numbers that have been appearing on parochial reports are “not accurate.” (One might imagine other, less charitable descriptions.) Anyway, he said that the diocese is getting a handle on this problem.

Dr. Gundersen’s next question was about how we can accommodate theological diversity in the diocese.

Bishop McConnell answered that we are called to unity, even when we disagree. Relationships between people are more important than agreement on issues. We need to know what makes people tick, even if they come to awful conclusions. A number of questions were asked from the floor, one of which elicited a story of the bishop’s discussions with labor leaders leading him to raise the issue of income inequality at a meeting of Christian Associates of Southwest Pennsylvania. The response of the assembled religious leaders was dead silence. Roman Catholic Bishop David Zubik, however, is planning to meet with our bishop to explore the matter. (Earlier, I had suggested to the PEP board that income inequality is an issue that the organization and the diocese should take on. Could this become a major diocesan project?)

PEP’s next question concerned lay leadership, one of the foci articulated in the bishop’s address to last year’s convention. What are we doing about lay leadership?

The bishop said that our church is too clergy-centric, but he admitted that, although he thinks of himself as lay-leader-oriented, that is not always a good description of how he acts. He mentioned two specific lay leadership programs, one from The Episcopal Church and one from The Leadership Development Initiative. I noted that Dwight J. Zscheile recommends greater communication between parishioners of different parishes in People of the Way: Renewing Episcopal Identity. How can such communication be encouraged? The bishop responded that laypeople had to make that happen. Another question—really more of a comment—suggested that parishes often have individuals who refuse to relinquish control. In response, the bishop explained that he was seeking a canon to allow him to intervene in parishes on the brink of disaster. (The idea of such a canon was raised when I was on the Committee on Constitution and Canons. We seem to be no closer to formulating such a canon.)

PEP’s next question was how can he, in good conscience, do mission in Uganda, where both the government and the local Anglican church have appalling attitudes toward gays.

The bishop replied that Jesus said to love your enemies, and he insisted that he engages with clergy in Uganda, trying to get them to see that their attitudes are less than Christian. (Bishop McConnell has long been associated with Pilgrim Africa and makes regular trips to Uganda.)

For PEP’s final question, Dr. Gundersen asked where we stand on recovering property 5½ years after the diocese split.

No one expected a very detailed answer to this question, and we were not disappointed. Unsurprisingly, it was Chancellor Andy Roman who answered the question. He pointed out that we recovered all diocesan property—I later pointed out that we didn’t get back our telephones and desk chairs (or computers, for that matter)—and that we own a number of properties that we are allowing Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh congregations to use. An additional 15 properties or so are titled in the name of their congregations, and ownership of these churches has yet to be resolved. I asked if it was our intention to reclaim all off our property. (I particularly want us to recover the property of Ascension in Oakland and of St. Stephen’s, Sewickley.) The inquiry received no real answer. The decision, the chancellor declared, will be made by diocesan leaders.

Bishop McConnell closed the meeting with prayer, and people resumed their individual conversations before heading home.

Bishop McConnell to Speak at PEP Meeting

On Monday, June 16, Bishop Dorsey McConnell will be speaking on the state of the diocese at Calvary Church, sponsored by Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh. Everyone is invited to hear what the bishop has to say and to ask questions. Details are below—click on the graphic for a larger view—and on our PDF flyer.

Baseball Conventional Wisdom Is Sometimes Stupid

The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Miami Marlins 8–6 last night in 13 innings thus breaking a streak of 11 consecutive losses on Fridays the thirteenth. Good news, right.  Well, only sort of.

Perhaps the best news was that the much-anticipated right fielder Gregory Polanco, called up only days before to fill in for Neil Walker, who underwent an emergency appendectomy, ended the night with five hits, including a game-winning home run in the top of the thirteenth inning. Polanco looked pretty good in the field as well, saving a run in the third by making a diving catch of what seemed a sure hit by Reed Johnson. The night was made sweeter for the new Pirate by his mother’s presence in the stands for the first time in his major league career. (See the MLB.com story here.)

Overall descriptions of the game are available from MLB.com and from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. As can be seen from the box score, Polanco went 5 for 7; Marte 4 for 7, including a first inning two-run homer; McCutchen 2 for 7; Davis 2 for 3; Martin and Mercer each 1 for 6; and Barmas 2 for 2.

What was most extraordinary about the game was the bottom of the ninth. Jeff Lock had pitched eight innings, given up 2 runs to the Pirates’ 6, and walked none. He had thrown 101 pitches and had not allow a run since the third inning. His effectiveness did not seem to be diminishing as the game wore on.

But baseball conventional wisdom says that it risks the health of a pitcher for him to throw more than 100 pitches in a game. It is also conventional wisdom to bring in a specialist pitcher in the ninth inning when your team is ahead. In this case, Manager Clint Hurdle took out Locke and brought in Justin Wilson. Since there wasn’t a save situation, Hurdle did not select closer Jason Grilli or Grilli-substitute Mark Melancon.

Wilson, who seemed nearly incapable of throwing strikes, walked two and managed only a single out. Hurdle had had enough; he brought in Grilli, a move that, in times past, had seemed to make shutting down the opposition pretty much a sure thing. Grilli couldn’t throw strikes, either. He got one ground out, but he walked two and gave up a two-run single. He then intentionally walked Casey McGehee, a serious threat at the plate, to load the bases. With the score 6–5, Grilli was pulled for Melancon. The formerly reliable closer was seriously and visibly upset. Malancon wasn’t much better than Wilson or Grilli. He walked in the tying run before scoring the third out. A seemingly certain Pirate win had suddenly gone from a comfortable 6–2 lead to a 6–6 tie. Pirate pitchers had walked 6 batters in a single inning!

Jeanmar Gomez, who proved to be the winning pitcher, throw 4 scoreless innings for the Pirates, allowing the team to retain the two-run advantage earned by Polanco’s home run in the thirteenth.

Clint Hurdle went with the conventional wisdom in removing Locke after 8 innings, but I think doing so was a serious mistake. Bringing in a new pitcher, irrespective of his record, is always something of a crap shoot, and why would you want to roll the dice rather than stick with a pitcher who is doing a fine job and who has just barely crossed the arbitrary line of maximum allowable pitches? This is not the first time I have seen games fall apart when a successful pitcher has been removed near the end of a game.

Instead of going with the conventional wisdom, baseball managers should spend a few moments realistically weighing the odds of their decisions. They just might make different, and better, choices.

Update, 6/15/2014. Yesterday’s game was alarmingly similar to Friday’s. Charlie Morton pitched seven innings and left the game with the Pirates ahead 8–2. He threw 108 pitches. Stolmy Pimentel came in in the eighth and gave up a two-run home run in the ninth. He was replaced by Grilli, who gave up another two-run homer. The final score was 8–6.

The Fault in Our Stars

I am usually disappointed in movies made from books I’ve read. Such disappointment is not inevitable, but the limited length of movies does make it difficult to reproduce all the subtleties of a substantial novel.

Thursday night, I attended a special showing of The Fault in Our Stars sponsored by my church, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Lebanon. A number of scenes in the movie, which is based on the John Green young adult bestseller, were filmed at St. Paul’s. Knowing that I would be seeing the movie, I read the book two weeks ago.

Red Carpet gala ramps up at Mt. Lebanon’s Galleria Mall Thursday night

The Galleria Mall event was covered by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, KDKA-TV, and WTAE-TV. Wikipedia provides a good summary of the book here and offers information about the movie here. I won’t attempt to summarize the plot.

I liked the movie, but I cannot say that I loved it. I can say the same about the book, which the movie follows closely. Hazel is a clever and unusually sensitive teenager who is concerned about her effect on others, even if her evaluations sometime miss the mark. Augustus is handsome and less cautious, and he is, for a teenager, especially respectful of Hazel’s needs. Both characters are preternaturally witty and sympathetic. Neither book nor movie is offensively sentimental, not another Love Story. The plot, or that part of it concerning Peter Van Houten, however, is a bit farfetched, though it is engaging.

In any case, I am inclined to agree with the review on RogerEbert.com that contends that the movie—and one might argue, the book—“feels emotionally inert.” I did not cry at the end of the movie, and I am not above doing so in response to a particularly affecting film. (I wept uncontrollably after watching The China Syndrome, but many would consider that reaction weird.) Perhaps I did not feel devastated by the death of Augustus because narrator Hazel didn’t.

As I said, the movie follows the book closely, which is not a criticism and which partially explains the film’s more than two-hour running time. This is reasonably long as movies go, but it did not seem excessively so.

And this brings me to my main criticism of the movie. A number of elements of the book that provide the glue holding the plot together failed to make it to the screen, yet it seems that they could have been included without unduly increasing the movie’s length. In the film, it is never explained that Augustus originally stares at Hazel because she resembles a former girlfriend. Van Houten is independently wealthy, but this fact is, at best, implicit. In the book, Lidewij actually quits her job over the way Van Houten treats the teenagers, but her anger and tears didn’t effectively make it to the screen. Hazel’s mother, played by Laura Dern, perhaps my favorite character in the film, never explains that she was often doing schoolwork while waiting in the church parking lot for her daughter. And Hazel’s father, who cries a lot in the book, is a passionless spectator in the movie.

I enjoyed the book, and I enjoyed the movie, but I suspect that I would have liked them a good deal less were it not for the connection to St. Paul’s. If looking for a movie to see this summer, however, you could do worse than choosing The Fault in Our Stars.

Update, 6/9/2014. NPR’s David Edelstein has produced a helpful review of the movie, which you can read or listen to here.

The Episcopal Church Center as a Symbol of Episcopal Unity

Del Glover has published “Should We Sell the Church Center? Part 1” on Daily Episcopalian.

Personally, I am undecided as to whether the church should move its headquarters from 815 Second Avenue in New York City, but I am interested in what people have to say about the possibilities. The practical and financial implications of a move, of course, are complex. Glover does not express an opinion but suggests questions we should be asking ourselves.

I was particularly struck by this observation in the Daily Episcopalian post:

The Church Center for Episcopalians is not a symbol of our unity; regrettably, we have no such site that functions to symbolize what it means to be an Episcopalian. It is not a pilgrimage site and so to many Episcopalians its significance is minimal.

June Butler, in a comment on the Glover post, suggested that Washington National Cathedral is a symbol of our unity, and she suggested that the cathedral close might be an appropriate location for the Episcopal Church Center. I know that, when I have visited Washington National Cathedral, I have very much felt like an Episcopalian and have been grateful to be able to claim a connection to such a magnificent spiritual landmark.

That the Episcopal Church Center is not a symbol of our unity is illustrated by a story told by Daniel Ennis in another comment:

As a South Carolina Episcopalian, I’ve been involved in the transition of our diocese, and much of that transition has been informed by the need to reconnect with our Episcopal heritage, since many of our now-departed leaders dedicated themselves to tearing TEC down.

I was in Manhattan on business a few months ago, and decided to visit 815. I’d never been, and I figured I could pick up some materials (like the tracts one finds in TEC churches), browse the bookstore, or even pray in the chapel.

Admittedly, I didn’t have an appointment. But I didn’t really have an agenda, either—just wanted to visit the HQ of my Church … feel connected to the larger organization. You can’t imagine how precious that connection is in our diocese these days.

So I enter the lobby of 815 at about 1pm on a Wednesday. A security guard who I can only describe as annoyed asks me my business. I’m a little thrown—there’s no welcome center, no sign beyond the facade that I’m in a place associated with religion. I ask if there’s a reading room or information desk

No.

I ask if there’s any brochures, newsletters, or TEC printed media I can take back home.

Nothing.

So I stand there like a chump and then head back out onto Second Avenue.

I’m not qualified to comment on real estate values, but selling the current “church center” might allow our leaders to re-imagine what a “church center” can be. If right now the “center” of our church is little better than Trump Tower in terms of atmosphere and outreach, what good is it?

I find this story very sad. Clearly, the Episcopal Church Center is in no way a worthy pilgrimage site for Episcopalians. It could, however, be otherwise if we thought it should be.

Perhaps, however, relocating to Mount St. Alban would be a wise and spiritually productive move.

ERD Network Meeting

I returned home Sunday from the Episcopal Relief & Development 2014 Network Meeting, which took place in Atlanta, Georgia. This annual meeting brings together diocesan and provincial coördinators for ERD, who are briefed on the work of the church agency and discuss methods of increasing the visibility of ERD and gathering support for its work.

I attended the meeting primarily to support Diane Duntley, the diocesan coördinator for the Diocese of Pittsburgh, who has mobility issues. I participated fully in the event, however, and was impressed by the work ERD is doing. I enjoyed meeting the participants and even met a Facebook friend I had never encountered in person.

I won’t try to give a full accounting of the three-day event, but I do want to mention a few things that struck me as interesting:

• Episcopal Relief & Development is not well known throughout The Episcopal Church. Many parishes are largely unaware of ERD and provide no support for it. Not all bishops are enthusiastic about ERD, apparently because they are more interested in other fund-raising  efforts.
• ERD will soon be 75 years old. It was started in 1940 as the Presiding Bishop’s Fund for World Relief. It has continued under its current name for nearly 15 years.
• The mission of ERD has changed over the years. It began as a refugee settlement effort. It is now involved in improving the food supply, economic improvement, improving health and fighting disease, and responding to disasters. It is best known for disaster relief and the NetsForLife^® program.
• Approximately 90% of contributions to ERD go directly to program. This is the result of low administrative and fund-raising costs and the availability of earnings from endowment.

While listening to a presentation about the work of Episcopal Relief & Development, I was struck that my hymn “O Lord the Invisible” is an appropriate one for ERD. I mentioned this and was asked to read or sing the hymn for the final Morning Prayer service. I chose not to sing. (The service was in the hotel, and no instrument was available for accompaniment.) Instead, I read the hymn and played the tune in the background from my tablet. Since the hymn has a refrain, I wrote it on a flip chart, and we read it together at the end of each verse as an antiphon. This worked well.

A Challenge to Justin Welby

It’s about the fact that I’ve stood by a grave side in Africa of a group of Christians who’d been attacked because of something that had happened far, far away in America, and they were attacked by other people because of that and a lot of them had been killed.

—Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby,  4/4/2014

The Archbishop of Canterbury made this rather elliptical remark on a radio talk show a month ago. (See “Whither Welby?”) He has done little to clarify his assertion, which has been taken to mean that the Church of England cannot perform same-sex weddings because it will lead to the murder of Christians in Africa, as has happened before as a result of The Episcopal Church’s consecration of  a gay bishop.

What I do not want to do here is discuss the morality of the archbishop’s putting the brakes on church blessings of same-sex unions in England with the intention of protecting the lives of Christians elsewhere. That topic has been adequately explored elsewhere, including in my own post cited above. Instead, I want to discuss Welby’s premise.

If Justin Welby is to be taken seriously, he needs to document his contention that Africans have been slaughtered because of actions of The Episcopal Church. I have been unable to find any news reports making such a connection, and I think it exceedingly unlikely that such a connection exists.

As I admitted earlier, I do not doubt that the archbishop was told of the connection by his informants, but that is only hearsay, and hearsay from people who likely concocted their story for their own purposes. Perhaps they even believe their own story. That, however, does not make the story true.

Violence in Africa usually has more proximate causes, however—tribal rivalries, political struggles, contention for resources, or abstract Muslim-Christian antipathies. The people who know why the Christians Welby talked about were killed are not the witnesses of the atrocity, but the perpetrators. Did anyone ask them what their real motives were? Would you expect a truthful answer even if you did? Probably not.

The challenge to the archbishop, then, is to present independent evidence that actions of The Episcopal Church have been a proximate cause of atrocities in Africa. If he can offer no such evidence, he should admit it. Otherwise, it will be reasonable to conclude that Justin Welby believed what he was told because of his own prejudices, and his credibility, or even his veracity, will be in grave doubt.

Well, archbishop, what about it? Is there anyone else out there who can verify Justin Welby’s “facts”?

African-American

I got into a discussion of race on Facebook the other day. Well, the discussion was not really about race per se; it was about how one should refer to what used to be called Negroes.

I don’t intend to discuss race here, and I won’t even concede that race is a useful scientific concept. Most Americans, however, do classify people by “race,” based primarily on their appearance. And America’s legacy of slavery still casts a long shadow over our nation.

The matter at issue then—it was not originally framed this way—was what dark-skinned Americans of sub-Saharan ancestry should be called.

This question immediately calls to mind, for me, at least, a cartoon I once saw (in the late 60s, I believe). A white man was speaking to a black man. The caption was “What are you people calling yourselves these days?” Even today, white people can sympathize with that question. So can black people.

My correspondent was a black man who averred that he did not liked to be called African-American; he just wanted to be called an American. I could appreciate the sentiment, but, if one actually wanted to name his race, however understood, “American” is not really helpful.

In fact, “African-American” is both curious and problematic. To begin with, it is a poor proxy for race. I have some friends who are whites from South Africa. They are surely African-American, but they are certainly not black. If one gets into the habit of calling black people African-Americans, what is a black woman from Africa who happens to live in London? Is she an English African-American?  The term really refers to geographic ancestry, not racial ancestry.

But it is odd that we call someone African-American whose ancestors may have been in the United States even before there was a United States. We don’t call a white person who has been on our shores for so long an English-American or Dutch-American or German-American. For anyone but a black person, the hyphenated American designation seldom extends to more than two generations.

I’m not sure when or why the term “African-American” became politically correct in the U.S. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke of “Negroes.” “Colored” was current at the same time, though it was tainted with an air of condescension.  In a time of rising consciousness, “Negro” was uncomfortably similar to a less respectful designation. “Black” became popular, along with the phrases “black is beautiful” and “black power.”

Perhaps the concepts of black pride and black power caused the white establishment to prefer a term that de-emphisizes “black,” and maybe even race itself. “African-American,” however, also subtly diminishes American-ness. A black man is an African-American, not quite a fully American American.

Race still matters in America. We have not yet achieved the color-blind society or the society with equal opportunity for all. It’s time to dump “African-American” and talk honestly about Americans who are black.

Undocumented

I have been reading “Ecclesiology and Moral Discernment: Seeking a Unified Moral Witness,” a recent product of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Theological Consultation in the U.S.A.      

I was struck by the use of “undocumented migrants” in paragraph 36 and reminded of my longstanding discomfort with the term “undocumented.”

Of course, the usual phrase is “undocumented immigrants.” This has become the politically correct euphemism for what used to be called “illegal immigrants.” This rhetorical change has occurred for at least two reasons. First—and this is not always acknowledged— “undocumented” is seen as less severely judgmental. Second, it is argued that the undocumented immigrant, qua person, is not illegal, though that person may be in this country by virtue of having committed an illegal act.

That is all well and good, but the term “undocumented” suggests not so much deliberate violation of federal law as it does simple bureaucratic slip up in the processing of paperwork. Public discourse would benefit from a term that is less harsh than “illegal” but more properly descriptive than “undocumented.”

I suggest that “unsanctioned immigrant” might be a better term, as the referent has not received the sanction of the government to be in the country. The phrase has something of a double meaning, at least insofar as we do not allow such a person to remain in the country while imposing a penalty—the unsanctioned immigrant has not been sanctioned (punished) for entering the country illegally.

Postscript: I have found the various Anglican/Roman Catholic dialogues (particularly ARCIC) worrisome, since Anglicans have a tradition of diversity, and Roman Catholics seem to have a tradition of proclaiming truth and resisting any suggestion that it is anything but Truth. My concern has been that the Anglicans, in the spirit of Christian unity, will be tempted to give away the store. The latest ARC-USA paper is actually reassuring, however. It is about explaining and illustrating how Episcopalians, on one hand, and Roman Catholics, on the other, evaluate and teach about issues of morality. The paper makes no attempt to suggest that the methodologies or conclusions of moral reasoning in the two churches will (or even should) converge anytime soon. As such, the paper is a helpful educational tool. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that unified moral witness.

Reform

I heard a radio report this morning of a Republican plan to “reform” the Pennsylvania tax system. The plan would involve reducing or abolishing property taxes in favor of higher sales and income taxes. In other words, the scheme would transfer tax burdens from more well-off people to the less privileged and the outright poor. Is this really reform?

In the American political lexicon, any plan to change the status quo, whether in law or practice, is touted as reform. One person’s reform, however, is another person’s backward step. Democrats and Republicans can advance diametrically opposed legislative plans, each of which is said to constitute reform. If a plan involves a change more aligned with one’s philosophy or desires, it is easy to call it a reform. Those who do not share that philosophy or desires may have a quite different view. The theme of “reform” is such a powerful rhetorical tool that we cannot expect politicians to abandon its use.

Journalists, however, should be more careful in how they use “reform.” It is one thing for a journalist to say that a legislator or party calls a proposal a reform; it is quite another for that journalist to place the reform label on a proposal without attributing that description to a person or group. Given our present political divide, a journalist who calls a plan to change immigration law a proposed “immigration reform,” is likely, if inadvertently, carrying water for the advocates of that plan.

When can “reform” properly be used by a journalist who strives for objectivity? When there is a clear consensus that something is wrong with the status quo and changes need to be made, it is fair to say that politicians are seeking reform. Certainly, “immigration reform” is on the national agenda now—everyone seems to believe that change is needed, though there is much dispute as to what that change should be. Also, when there is both a consensus that something is wrong and a consensus as to what is to be done, we can properly speak of reform. (I’m hard pressed to cite an example of a piece of legislation that qualifies as reform legislation, but I’m sure there must be one.)

In any case, not every change—indeed, few changes—are really reforms. Therefore, a reporter writing about one proposal or another regarding, say, immigration, should simply refer to the “immigration bill.” Let the politicians do what they will do, but don’t let them get away with selling their “reform” snake oil.

The Most Popular Post

Some visitors have no doubt noticed the list of “Popular Posts” to the right of my blog posts. The first post listed is usually “A Preëmptive Political Post,” an essay I wrote on September 2, 2012, in anticipation of the upcoming presidential election. Near the beginning of that post, I wrote:

To save myself from all that future writing [in the days leading up to the November election], I’ve decided to develop a kind of preëmptive post simply listing themes relevant (or maybe relevant) to the presidential campaign. Each of these themes could be expanded into a standalone essay, but I leave that, at least for now, to the imagination of the reader. …

Actually, since my “themes” are generally assertions, I should perhaps call them truths. They will seem that more readily to Democrats than to Republicans, although I gore a donkey or two in addition to the elephants.

I suspect that the “popularity” of this post has more to do with the multitude of political issues touched on in the post, rather than with a widespread sense that my essay, taken as a whole, is a brilliant piece of political journalism. In other words, I suspect that I inadvertently created an effective Google magnet. My essay probably gets lots of “views” but not many “reads.”

Having just reread “A Preëmptive Political Post,” however, I think that’s unfortunate. A year and a half later, I stand by all the assertions I made in 2012. If you haven’t read the post and would like to see my take on what principles should underlie a progressive agenda, read the post now. Be the first to comment on my most “popular” post.

Whither Welby?

Ever since he became Archbishop of Canterbury, Episcopalians and other Anglicans have been trying to figure out what Justin Welby believes and how he will use his office. Will his tenure represent continuity with that of his predecessor, Rowan Williams, or will he act quite differently?

Early Indications

It was quickly apparent that Welby is less aloof and more plainspoken than Williams, more down-to-earth, if you will. He is easier to like and to relate to. His support for allowing women to become bishops in the Church of England has been encouraging, as has been his outspoken support for the downtrodden of English society. As far as I can determine, Welby has never made any public pronouncements about the Anglican Covenant, likewise a good thing.

His record on same-sex marriage, on the other hand, has been disappointing. In the House of Lords, he strongly opposed the bill that eventually authorized same-sex marriage in England and Wales. More distressing still was the pastoral guidance on same-sex marriage promulgated by the House of Bishops, presumably under the influence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Whereas the Pilling Report suggested that English clergy should be given some significant discretion in dealing with same-sex couples availing themselves of their new right to marry, the bishops announced unexpected restrictions on the ability of clergy to bless such partnerships or to enter into same-sex marriages themselves. The pastoral guidance seemed mean-spirited. (Tobias Haller, with a certain satirical malice,  perfectly captured the ethos of the episcopal directions in his post, “A Form of Prayer for a Same-Sex Marriage.”)

The Talk Show

Two days ago, Justin Welby was the guest on a radio call-in show on LBC radio hosted by James O’Brien. Apparently, no Archbishop of Canterbury had ever been on such a show. (Kudos to Welby for that.) On the whole, he handled his role with aplomb, as one might expect from the clerical leader of the Church of England. Liberal Anglicans can be pleased with Welby’s remarks about women bishops, economic inequality, the cost of energy, the nature of God, and the stewardship of church property. His observations regarding the church and homosexuals were revealing, but only added to the anxiety felt by liberal Anglicans.

The entire one-hour show can be viewed below:

What He Said

The archbishop had a lot to say in response both to callers and to host James O’Brien.  I want first to call attention to some of his remarks and then to offer a general critique of his performance.

Early in the show, Welby declined to comment on whether the same-sex marriage law is a good thing or not. He justified his reticence by noting that the church is in the process of deciding together about same-sex marriage, referring, presumably, to the facilitated conversations called for in the Pilling Report. Having argued so vigorously against the law, however, one can only assume that he is actually not too keen on it, even though he declared that the church would no longer oppose it once it was in effect. (What could the church do that would possibly be productive at this juncture?)

When asked directly whether homosexuality is wrong, he again refused to answer. But then he said this:

People can’t help being gay, and every human being’s dignity has to be respected.

It is encouraging that the archbishop believes that one’s sexual orientation is not a choice. Moreover, he later acknowledged that homosexuals, especially gay teenagers, experience “enormous suffering.” Respecting the dignity of homosexuals, however, runs afoul of the church’s current view of marriage:

My position is the historic position of the church, which is in our canons, which says that sexual relations should be within marriage, and marriage is between a man and a woman.

Of course, an all-male episcopate was also traditional and protected by canon, yet he campaigned against it. One has to think that his invocation of the status quo is, at least in part, a fig leaf to cover his own prejudices.

What is not clear is whether Welby is open to changing the position of the Church of England as a possible outcome of the facilitated conversations. O’Brien asked if the archbishop could imagine a gay wedding being performed in an Anglican church. He replied that he didn’t have to imagine it because it was already happening in some places. Then he said this:

I look at the scriptures; I look at the teaching of the church; I listen to Christians around the world; and I have real hesitation about that because I really don’t [want to?] say no to people who love each other. You have to have a sense of what the teaching of the church is. You can’t just make sudden changes.

Welby stammered uncharacteristically as he said this. His concern for homosexual persons seems genuine, but it is not his only serious concern.

None of the foregoing made news. What caught everyone’s attention was Welby’s explanation of why the Church of England’s embrace of same-sex marriage would be problematic. Many have assumed that the Archbishop of Canterbury is reluctant to offend conservative African primates who have threatened to distance their churches from Lambeth and, implicitly, from the Anglican Communion. Although Welby denied it, consideration of—as O’Brien put it—“conniptions” that a more gay-friendly policy in England might give Global South leaders must surely factor into Welby’s calculus of constraints under which he must operate. (I suspect that the archbishop was none-too-happy with the use of “conniptions,” and he took immediate exception to O’Brien’s referring to “less enlightened people in Africa.”)

In any case, Welby told this story:

I’ve stood by graveside in Africa of a group of Christians who’d been attacked because of something that had happened far, far away in America. And they were attacked by other people because of that, and a lot of them have been killed. And I was in the South Sudan a few weeks ago, and the church leaders there were saying, “Please don’t change what you’re doing because then we couldn’t accept your help, and we need your help desperately.” And we have to listen carefully to that.

O’Brien asked this question:

So a Christian on the ground in Africa could end up being on the receiving end of violence and abuse because of a decision taken at Lambeth Palace about sexual equality, about gay marriage?

Welby answered, simply, “Yes.”

(For readers unwilling to watch the entire LBC program, the most newsworthy excerpt is here.)

Welby and the Anglican Communion

I don’t doubt for a moment that the archbishop was told what he reported when he was in South Sudan. I have serious doubts about the candor of his informants, however. There have been numerous massacres in Sudan in recent years, but, although these have generally been Muslim-on-Christian violence, I have seen no credible reports suggesting that they have had anything to do with any event in the U.S. Archbishop Welby did not hint at what might have sparked the killings he reported. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada are far ahead of the Church of England in their fair treatment of gays and lesbians, but it isn’t obvious that this is responsible for the deaths of Anglicans elsewhere. One might argue that the Church of England is a special case, but it isn’t as special as it thinks. See below.

This is not to say that violence in one country cannot be inspired by events elsewhere. The infamous Danish cartoons and the laughably amateurish Innocence of Muslims trailer each led to deadly violence in Islamic countries, but these were extreme cases in which the “provocation” was construed as a frontal attack on Islam itself. Surely the embrace of marriage equality by the Church of England would be less inflammatory.

As an aside, I should note that, although many commentators have suggested that Welby is acceding to blackmail, he is actually bowing to extortion. Not that this matters—neither would represent capture of the high moral ground on his part. The Archbishop of Canterbury has declared himself willing to continue the actual harm being done to members of his own church in the hope of staving off hypothetical evil actions of foreigners over which he has no control.

The Rev. Susan Russell described Welby’s stance as pathetic, rather than prophetic. Certainly, the Church of England has the opportunity to demonstrate a more humane and, many would say, a more Christian way of responding to the challenge of homosexuality than is commonplace in the Anglican Global South. The archbishop is unwilling to take that opportunity.

As for churches such as that of South Sudan’s being unable to accept aid from the Church of England if England embraces marriage equality, that is South Sudan’s problem. That country is already accepting aid from Episcopalians in America, so I view the argument that South Sudan would need to eschew English aid as pure extortion.

Whatever the “real” reasons Welby might have for fearing the effects that actions taken by the Church of England might have on conservative churches of the Anglican Communion, the fear itself is the product of the arrogant self-importance that seems to afflict Archbishops of Canterbury. Holders of the office seem to view the Communion as the last remnant of empire, to which they must cling to retain any semblance of English self-respect.

Consider a few selected quotes from the LBC program:

But the problem we face … is that everything we say here goes around the world, for reasons of history and media and all that, so we don’t make policy on the hoof … .

Ninety-eight percent of members of the Anglican Communion who are regular churchgoers are not in England. The average Anglican is an African woman in her 30s—a sub-Saharan African woman in her 30s.

We are the most incredible multinational organization. The Anglican Church is in 143 countries, 37 provinces.

What we say here is heard round the world.

Why can’t we just do it [make major changes] now? Because the impact of that on Christians in countries far from here, like South Sudan, like Pakistan, Nigeria, and other places, would be absolutely catastrophic. And we have to love them as much as we love the people who are here.

We are one of the great international groups that there is in this world; we are massively majority, not in England.

When I attended my confirmation class thirty years ago, the Anglican Communion was described as a fellowship of independent churches that had little effect on the day-to-day operation of The Episcopal Church or of its dioceses and parishes. Bishops got together every decade to discuss matters of concern to them at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who acted as a kind of party host. I was pleased to learn that I could find churches throughout the world related to the one I was about to join, but no one suggested that the fellowship was the sort of monolith of which the Roman Catholic Church was the prime example (and one I wanted to get away from as far as possible). It was made very clear that there is no “Anglican Church,” only Anglican churches (or provinces). Yet, despite the protestations of Welby (and other Archbishops of Canterbury) that he has no desire to be the Anglican pope, he does seem to possess some deep-seated papal envy. He wants to be (or, at the very least, believes himself to be) very important in the Christian world.

If the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), say, wants to avoid any local unrest due to actions of the Church of England, or of any other Communion church for that matter, it can invoke plausible deniability. The Nigerian church is an independent organization having neither control over nor obligation to follow the lead of the Church of England. End of story.

In fact, it has been the primates of the conservative Global South and their fellow travelers (and bankrollers) in the West that have promoted an exulted view of the Anglican Communion and the notion that all our churches are somehow bound at the hip. Why? Precisely so they can play on raw numbers and colonial guilt to extort money, prestige, and support for their own traditionalist beliefs from the liberal churches of the Anglican world. It is high time that Western churches—and especially the Church of England—condemned that extortion for what it is. Neither the Church of England nor the Archbishop of Canterbury is half as important as Justin Welby imagines them to be.

There are only two ways that widespread change happens in the world. Either (1) it is imposed by a dictatorial leader or through a more-or-less democratic process by a body possessing agreed-upon authority or (2) early adopters implement change, and others, seeing the wisdom of their actions, eventually follow along. Serious change almost never comes about by simply waiting for everyone to come to the same conclusion as to what needs to be done. The Anglican Communion as a whole is not going to come to a uniform policy regarding homosexuality in our lifetimes. (Not all Communion churches even accept women priests!) The churches that can, need to end the treatment of homosexuals as second- (or third-) class members and show the way of Christ to others.

Welby the Conflicted

Justin Welby is, I think, a perfectly decent chap, but he is clearly suffering from cognitive dissonance, that is, he holds, simultaneously, mutually contradictory ideas. On the one hand, he believes that homosexuals have been persecuted by the church and deserve to be treated like anyone else. Yet he heads a church that, at least on paper, holds otherwise. Moreover, he sincerely believes that treating homosexuals fairly at home will result in death to innocent Christians elsewhere. He is, from his point of view, between Scylla and Charybdis.

It is easy to sympathize with Welby’s dilemma. Even though he has constructed a temporary rationale for inaction, he surely must realize that he cannot forestall his church’s decision on same-sex marriage forever. One way or another, the facilitated conversations can only end badly. I suspect that he will try to export the sexuality conversations to the entire Anglican Communion in a vain attempt to achieve consensus or at least avoid a crisis. In the meantime, however, life happens, and God, not Justin Welby, is in control.

Welby’s problems are of his own making. First, the problem of the Church of England’s stance on homosexuality is really no problem at all, at least from an institutional viewpoint. Citing the church’s current doctrine is but a rationale for avoidance. The church has changed its views on divorce, ordination of women, and other matters, and it can surely change its view of marriage without the world’s coming to an end. Of course, even taken in isolation from other churches, he may not consider this a good outcome, but it almost certainly will be demanded by the English people, and, if he is still in office, he will be forced to go along.

As for the effect of change on the rest of the world, the archbishop needs to realize that neither he nor his church is as important to the world as it thinks they are. He is a primate like any other, and whatever moral authority he has is hardly advanced by bowing to extortion that hurts those under his care in the hope that doing so will inspire right behavior in others who have no incentive to pay him the slightest attention. A little humility will greatly reduce the current cognitive dissonance the archbishop is experiencing.

A Word about The Episcopal Church

Wherever Archbishop Justin Welby chooses to go, The Episcopal Church and perhaps a handful of like-minded churches, should assert their need to follow Christ as they understand they are called to do. Our church should be willing to work with other churches of the Communion, but it will not be bound by their theologies. We must let the Anglican world know that following the lead of the Holy Spirit does not necessarily mean following the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates’ Meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council, or the GAFCON primates.

It is clear that Justin Welby has set himself up for failure. We should not follow.

National Poetry Month 2014

National Poetry Month is here again. I invite readers to sample my poetry on Lionel Deimel’s Farrago. You can find all my poetry here.