Pope Francis Goes All Robert Frost on the Trumpster

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

I like Pope Francis; can't say much for Donald Trump other than he knows exactly how to PT Barnum alot of people.

The Pope gets a bad rap, because the Media  likes to parse his words and drive bigger wedges between people.

As far as immigration goes, you never see or hear of people beating down the doors, swimming rivers, hazarding the oceans, or slipping under razor -concertina wire to get into Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Red China, or Venezuela.

America is great because of capitalism. Oddly, the very people who have amassed great fortunes because of that fact have given birth to people like David Rockefeller, Katrina Vanden Heuvel , the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls who want to see America become Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Red China, or Venezuela. Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who shouted famously, "Tear Down This Wall" and conservatives, liberals, rich and working folks cheered mightily?

America has rich people . . .no really.

It also has, thanks to the well-larded efforts of David Rockefeller, Katerina Van Heusen, the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls, a disappearing Middle Class.

The American Middle Class was created by the very tensions, compromises and common sense sparked between the people of great wealth and the working class ( Real Labor - the skilled private sector trade unions) in often bloody conflict.  Peace did out. The American Middle Class is the greatest economic and social justice miracle in history and the people like  David Rockefeller, Katrina Vanden Heuvel , the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls are embarassed by that fact. The Middle Class is, was and always shall be despised, used and intimidated by the elites.

The Middle Class is toxic tosocialism and much more offensive to pure Marxism. American Progressives were not born out of the working Middle Class.  They were and are very wealthy people who use that wealth to force policies and laws meant solely to eliminate the Middle Class.

Immigration, refugee suffering, voter registration of illegals and Sanctuary Cities are examples of the compelling narratives and faux coversations that develop policies and legislation used by the very wealthy, university educated and politically intimidating Progressives who want an American oligarchy - very few people of wealth and power.  The ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the Southern Poverty and Law Center, the 501 (c) 3 mega-bucks policy birthing foundations like MacArthur, Rockefeller, Joyce and Woods Funds position billions of dollars toward the ends that will bring this about.

Donald Trump knows this and uses simple, crude, loud and well placed sentences and paragraphs out into the atmosphere intended to gather good people into his camp.

Pope Francis is a priest.

They both know that a wall, a border, or a fence is merely a metaphor - so is a bridge.

What is ignored in all of this hoohah is the fact that Donald Trump is no different from the very people who insist that the American Middle Class disappear, like work of the elves in Old Bobby Frost's poem.

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

Well, as Frost notes, " it's not elves exactly."  Hell, no it is David Rockefeller, Katerina Vanden Heuvel, the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls and Donald Trump, his own bad self.

The American Media is Progressive. The American Media love Donald Trump as much as David Rockefeller, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the Kennedy Clan and Hollywood stars and moguls, because it knows Trump wants the very same thing - an American oligarchy.

Something there is that does not love America and the American Middle Class - it ain't Pope Francis.

Don't Send Your Kids to a Private (read Catholic, or Religious) School; Save Your Money for Medicinal Marijuana and ObamaCare, and Don't Forget LaLaPalooza 2014!

Bad parents made their kids go here


Good Parents  send their kids to public schools and save money for Medicinal Marijuana, LaLaPalooza, Pitchfork, Vegan Carry-outs and Indigo Girl Tix.

I read a really goofy Manifesto on Slate by Allison Bendikt and I knew that Bruce Dold of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board could not wait to re-print it after Eric Zorn shoved it under his nose.  The Tribune Editorial Board and its stable of quirky, edgy and too cool for Catholic school columnists has all the gravitas and discernment of MSNBC.  Here is Ms. Benedikt's attempt at public discourse - premise - Parents who send their kids to private schools ( Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, Muslim, Dutch Reformed and Suburban Secularist) are bad people.

Allison Benedikt is married to John Cook, who also writes for national Progressive publications like The Nation, Salon, The Republic.  You magazines read by rich people who really hate rich people.

Allison is not as strident as her hubby, who demands that private schools be outlawed just The Reich did in the 1930's.  Allison merely points to bad parents who send their kids to Catholic schools . . .private schools. She's not strident merely judgmental.

I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental. But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good. (Yes, rich people might cluster. But rich people will always find a way to game the system: That shouldn’t be an argument against an all-in approach to public education any more than it is a case against single-payer health care.)

 So, how would this work exactly? It’s simple! Everyone needs to be invested in our public schools in order for them to get better. Not just lip-service investment, or property tax investment, but real flesh-and-blood-offspring investment. Your local school stinks but you don’t send your child there? Then its badness is just something you deplore in the abstract. Your local school stinks and you do send your child there? I bet you are going to do everything within your power to make it better. . . .( YES WE CAN!!!! SI! SE PUEDE!!!!!) . . .Sorry but I could help myself.Now here comes the payoff!  . . . 

There are a lot of reasons why bad people send their kids to private school. Yes, some do it for prestige or out of loyalty to a long-standing family tradition or because they want their children to eventually work at Slate. But many others go private for religious reasons, or because their kids have behavioral or learning issues, or simply because the public school in their district is not so hot. None of these are compelling reasons. Or, rather, the compelling ones (behavioral or learning issues, wanting a not-subpar school for your child) are exactly why we should all opt in, not out.

Ms. Benedikt notes that she is fine ( perfectly content) with her ignorance of history as well as other public school education afforded gaps in her intellectual capacities.   Catholic schools teach that Ignorance is human, but Stupid is forever.  Ignorance needs to be corrected.  Human aspiration is the result.  A stupid person does not care a whit about what she/he does not know.  Back to paragraph # 1, parenthetical close:

(Yes, rich people might cluster. But rich people will always find a way to game the system: That shouldn’t be an argument against an all-in approach to public education any more than it is a case against single-payer health care.)

Rich people cluster, Catholics muster, but what about all those African American kids like the 90% here at Leo Catholic High School?  They have bad parents, Aunties, Grandmas and GrandPappies?  Bad Sponsors?

August 17

Ms. Benedikt admits to the sorry state of American public education in her Manifesto

I  believe in public education, but my district school really isn’t good! you might say. I understand. You want the best for your child, but your child doesn’t need it. If you can afford private school (even if affording means scrimping and saving, or taking out loans), chances are that your spawn will be perfectly fine at a crappy public school. She will have support at home (that’s you!) and all the advantages that go along with being a person whose family can pay for and cares about superior education—the exact kind of family that can help your crappy public school become less crappy. She may not learn as much or be as challenged, but take a deep breath and live with that. Oh, but she’s gifted? Well, then, she’ll really be fine.

My spawn all attended Catholic schools Pre-12 because we are Catholic.  However, were I Wiccan my spawn would have donned Catholic schoolyard jumpers, or Virgin Mary blue polos and navy strides from Zemskis anyway. I love my children, but more than that - I am obligated to their development as Americans.  Americans are not moral relativists, but committed citizens who know that they are not  the center of the Universe. To that end, I must do for my children from conception until I shed my mortal husk.

The total cost for the Catholic schooling of my spawn breaks out like this

Plutocrat Hickey Games the System, or From 1988 - 2014 for Spawn Total of 3

P-8   $ 26,000 in Tuition
P-8   $   6,400 in Books and Fees
9-12 $ 75,000 in Tuition
9-12 $   9,450 in Books and Fees
Spawn Total $ 116,850
My salary range between 1988-2013* Before Mortgage/City/County/State/ Federal Taxes & my Social Security Payments

1988 - $ 22,000
2013 - $ 71,000

* Two Parent Income 1988-1998 ( widowed 1/14/1998 all kids received Social Security Death Benefits monthly and socked away; plus generous gifts from family members in Memoriam)- Single Parent 1998-2013.

The Spawn Payoff - My oldest daughter and her fiance are going to close on house in Oak Lawn next month; my son is taking his Boiler Operations Class prior to his October journeyman's exam for IUOE Local 399 and my baby girl is engaged in the Freshman Seminar at Western Michigan University. All three Spawnies are committed voters ( Anti-Abortion Democrats) tax-payers and free of any criminal record.

That makes me a Bad Parent*.

Ms. Benedikt has cast her thoughts upon the waters of public opinion - good on you, Allison.  The Benedikt Manifesto will aid the Public School Industry's propaganda machine and reach the eyes and ears of millions.

My tens of readers have been offered my homey homily.

So long as whack-jobs continue to be afforded the microphones, the air-time and print shoved in front of  politely silent ( stunned?) audiences, what passes for American thought will continue to be as compelling as the Manifesto: Private School v. Public School in Slate, The New Republic, or The Nation.

Personally, I find more gravitas in periodicals like Jugs and Ammo. 

* One of the most laughable memes employed by the Public School Propaganda Ministry Contra School Choice is tired old saw - " BUT, People, Catholic Schools can kick out kids and have done with them."
Here is an exchange with a young man who lost a brother ( CPS Alum) to gang violence last October and went into a tail spin of truancy - we could not have the young guy back unless he chose to live at Mercy Home for Boys and Girls. Posted to Facebook.

• Conversation started Thursday
• 3:37pm

  
  

  (PHOTO Name REMOVED) Thank you for everything you and Mr.Mcgrath did for me last Mr. H, Last year was the roughest year of my life and I'm glad you to (sic) we're there to support and motivate me.. I couldn't express that anymore! Thank You
• Today
• 

  5:33am
  

  Pat Hickey
  

  
  

  You are a fine man, #$%%. God knows the troubles that have beset you in your young life, but He will help you over come anything. Dan and I both miss you. Stay strong. Old Man Hickey
• 5:37am
  

  
  
  

  
  

  ( PHOTO REMOVED )I'll try, that's the best thing I can do

  Times are tough, but only tough people make it past hard times ..
• 

  7:10am
  

  Pat Hickey
  

  
  

  You got that right. Fight the goofy impulse and work with your strengths - you are wicked smart, witty and good-hearted - work with that. McGrath and I are here for you 24/7 - Dude.

Dennis Byrne on Pope Francis, Progressive Narrative Doctrine and Just Folks

Pope Francis and a woman who really, really, really hates his guts - The President of Argentina, the widow Kirchner.

The Holy Spirit picked a winner in the Italian kid from Argentina.   The Conclave of Cardinals did the voting to be sure, but it was the Paraclete who did the selection of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, SJ, Archbishop of Buenas Aires to be 266th successor to the Chair of St. Peter.

This 'breath from God' whispered in the hearts of Cardinals could not come at a better time for Christ's Church, especially here in the secularly propagandized United States.  At this time, the loudest and most strident critics of the Catholic Church are the very people too many Catholics fear to offend with a confession of faith - " ( NPR voce with botoxed smile) I hope this Pope does everything we would have him do - ordain wonderful caring women and their wives as well and make sure that every woman has the proper funding to terminate her baby bump when she chooses;  don't you think?"

Those who do 'disagree' that the murder of children in the womb is merely a medical procedure chosen by a woman, or that same sex partners must define the meaning marriage are said to be 'on the wrong side of history, homophobic, unevolved, hateful, patriarchal and racist.

The loudest tossers of the priest sex-abuse scandal are perfectly comfortable with abortion on demand, sex without borders and dismissive of the family as a primitive superstition. These folks worship at the temple of John Dewey - the partiarch of social science ( facts and data that lead to government control) want to see religion disappear altogether - Jew, Catholic, Muslim Protestant, Hindu; perhaps with allowances for secular Buddhism and Unitarians.

Dennis Byrne, a Chicago reporter of the old school ( he actually cares about the facts) answers the strident howlers.

Pope Francis will indeed open the window to a breath of fresh air in church, as it was said of Pope John XXIII decades ago. Say goodbye to the over-the-top ostentatiousness of some hierarchy and clergy that has troubled many Catholics. Pray that Francis can cleanse the church of the last vestiges of the child sex-abuse scandal and that he will clean up the alleged hinky financial dealings. Expect a crackdown on the curia — the church's own version of a bloated government bureaucracy. And I'll bet Francis will bring more women — religious and lay — into the higher ranks of the church.
But the church's critics — inside and out — might as well get used to some things not changing — opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, artificial contraception and, as much as I would like to see it, married and women priests. I'd be glad to engage my religious friends on those issues, but that's for another day. Disagreement over such things need not destroy my faith. And it shouldn't allow the church's critics to define it as a medieval, abusive organization, obsessed with sex.
Pope Francis or no, the church will remain both a human and a divine organization, hamstrung by human frailties but capable of great deeds.

I am a practicing Catholic, though sometimes I ditch practice, and try to live according to morals and ethics my faith lays out for me.  Christ, His Father and the Holy Spirit, as well as my neighbors are holding the score card - not a study, a poll, a compelling narrative, a meme, MSNBC, WTTW, Hillary Clinton, Lady Gaga, the Cast of Book of Mormon, Glee, Anderson Cooper, or the Illinois Department of Human Services, much less some elected official or appointed judge .

Americans, Muslim, Jew, Catholic, or Baptist, are not yet subject to wearing an embroidered Star, Cross, or Crescent Moon on our duds.

Why Henry Steele Commager Erased Orestes Brownson

 

A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. Free society must fertilize the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow. permalink -Henry Steele Commager

Unless of course. . .

There is a peculiar fascination about this man who was a friend to Emerson and Thoreau, Ripley and Parker, and who broke with them all. It was his inconsistency which affronted his fellow reformers. He began as a Presbyterian, shifted to Universalism, fell from grace as an Owenite (compulsory public education), recovered respectability as a Unitarian, and plunged from there into the Catholic Church."  

Henry Steele Commager's Review of Arthur Schlesinger's biography Orestes Brownson: A Pilgrim's Progress (emphasis my own)

The granddaddy of progressive academic historians and biographer of Theodore Parker, Henry Steele Commager, paid his student's work on Orestes Browson very short shrift. Professor Commager commanded the high ground of American liberalism from his perch at Columbia University and consigned Arthur M. Schlesinger's subject and point of view to a place on the flat-lands. One year out of Harvard, young Schlesinger attempted to reconcile Brownson to the very mind-set and bigotries from which he departed -now called Progressivism. In order to do so, Schlesinger played down the "plunge" to the Catholic Church which Schlesinger knew to be the haven in the mind of main-line Protestant progressives who"associated Catholicism with censers and ornate masses and the scarlet whore of Rome or with drunken Irishmen beating their wives and selling their votes" (Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in his A Pilgrim's Progress: Orestes A. Brownson)

Henry Steele Commager damned Schlesinger's subject and the theme with very faint praise - Brownson 'commands consideration.' In fact, Commager's 1939 New York Times review title A Sturdy, but Erratic Reformer serves as a caveat to the hopeful young author, as it paradoxes the subject and theme into oblivion, only equaled by the concluding payoff:

Mr. Schlesinger's study of Brownson is a masterly one. It has technical brilliance-a sure control of materials, an affective handling of background, a skillful use of colors an a certain bravura of execution. It has, in addition, sincerity and integrity, sympathetic understanding, and an astonishing maturity. It recreates for us Brownson as he seemed to his contemporaries and explains him as he appears to us. It hangs equally well in the transcendental or the Catholic gallery, reveals the influence of the romantic and of the modernistic schools alike. It not only rescues from undeserved oblivion a striking and authentic figure in our history, but announces a new and distinguished talent in the field of historical portraiture.

Thanks for playing, Kid! You got plenty of heart!  Henry Steel Commager's life work as thinker, teacher, writer and activist recognized no place at the table for an Orestes Brownson, nor anyone attempting to challenge the progressive evangelism rooted  in the19th Century religious  ultraism,*purged of scripture and dogma with Transcendentalism, activated through politics as reform and fully evolved as liberal progressivism. The New Deal was not enough -multicultral one-world contrarian Americanism free of most authority, or certainty is the goal.  All other considerations receive the contempt of this court of opinion.

Commanding consideration holds the same thimbleful of valorization as an eight grade basketball coach who tells the players and coach of a team he had just humiliated on the hard-wood that "Losers have potential."

Henry Steel Commager wrote sweepingly to justify the roots of American intellectual doctrine to practical political power.  American history in the hands of able and compelling young writers directed by like-minded academics could make education, religion sanitized of scripture and authority, politics and economics create Brook Farm Nation.  He did just that.

Schlesinger never seemed to buy in - his Vital Center, though it made the case for the New Deal, excoriated the Brook Farmers who believed that communism and Americanism must be merged.  Schlesinger warned about the dangers of multiculturalism in the 1980's - the American Melting Pot is now considered a racist doctrine.

I believe that Orestes Brownson understood the American soul better than William James, Horace Mann, John Dewey, William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker and Jane Addams.  He understood that the American drive for liberty must always be tempered by the obligations of community. We can't always get what we want, nor should we. The sturdy Brownson was anything but erratic - he understood "the drive for freedom and the need for communion"  as Brownson biographer Patrick Carey presents in his 2006 epic Orestes Brownson: American Religious Weathervane. 

America is where it now finds itself thanks to intellectual high ground dominated by Henry Steele Commager for Thoreau, Parker, Garrison, James,, Dubois, Baldwin, and Dewey.  The Progressive American hegemony is being played out on the Fiscal Cliff of 2012.  

*  Most of these flights of religious ultraism were concentrated along a "psychic highway" that stretched from the backcountry of New England, across the undulating plains of western New York -- "The Burned-over District" -- into Ohio. Along this broad belt of land, observed Whitney Cross, the historian of enthusiastic religion in this area, there "congregated a people extraordinarily given to unusual beliefs, peculiarly devoted to crusades aimed at the perfections of mankind and the attainment of millennial happiness." ³ The source of religious ultraism -- evangelical revivalism -- was deeply embedded in the life of the times. Throughout this area small groups of "come outers," "New Lights," "Mercy Dancers," and other anti-Calvinist radicals did battle with the conservative Congregationalists and Presbyterians, while the constant agitation of such theological questions as free will, human ability, perfectionism, and millennialism, produced a climate in which fanaticism thrived. ⁴ 

The 

Orestes Brownson Against America's Convenient Faith and Lock-Step Secularism

Nowhere in the canon of American literature ( essay genre) will one find the brilliant and witty writings of Orestes Brownson.

In fact, Orestes Brownson has been made a non-person, via the Orwellian gradus of literary criticism - villify, ignore, erase. To place an essay by Browson within the period of American Romanticism/19th Century Transcendentalism/Abolitionist brackets, would seem as odd and cranky as requesting the viewing film (watching movies) as a substitute for reading, or teaching comic (graphic novels) book versions of the Last of the Mohicans, Blithedale Romance, or Moby Dick.

Brownson is not 'considered' a considered selection for the American canon of literature because Brownson became a Roman Catholic. Three of Brownson's colleagues and erstwhile friends have been canonized -Hawthorne, Emerson and Thoreau, according to the Modern Language Association rankings of the top twenty-five authors based upon scholarly research output. Unlike the Transcendentalists, Brownson was an original thinker who challenged not only the assumptions of the group, but his own assumptions.

Brownson was an early advocate of compulsory universal state-controlled early childhood education ( Owen-Wright Theory) and dismissed the notion as evil as well as unsound. You see, unlike the Blithedale gang of the Brook Farm movement -the petri dish of American intellectualism -Brownson believed in sin. Can't have that.  If all men are by nature pure and wonderful, sin must only be some judgmental anomaly associated with slavery of every stripe. Thought rooted to core belief has no place on the commune -

Then in 1844 (the year of Emerson's second "Nature" essay) Brownson and his family converted to Catholicism. The very negative response of the Transcendentalists to his conversion is best expressed in Theodore Parker's sermon that ascribed to Brownson an "unbalanced mind, intellectual always, but spiritual never" (J.Weiss, II, 28). After that, the Transcendentalists ignored him.

In 1844, Brownson did the unimaginable and converted to the Church of Rome.  The reaction of his former intellectual companions is rather harsh - they continue to be just that* Brownson sought, like Milton had done so, to justify God's ways to man and not the other way around.  Transcendentalism sprang from the Universalist Unitarian doctrine of Man's inner-light as a pan-theist approach to salvation that requires only that man be man. It's all good! For Brownson and that Jewish kid Gershwin - 'T ain't  necessarily so.

Browson** was engaged in living religion and not merely attending to it. Brownson's life was a constant immersion, not a dabbling, in causes to improve mankind's lot.  Mankind's lot is covered with broken beer bottles, garbage, sharp rusty objects - mankind sins and that is mankind's lot.  The convenient truths of American intellectual tradition deny sin and turn to European models of thought to justify man to himself - e.g. American realism and especially naturalism in fiction ( Howells, James, Crane, Dreiser, Sinclair, Wright) were rooted in Hugo, Stendhal,  Balzac, and ultimately Emile Zola.  Instead of considering personal responsibility for human misery, American intellectualism prefers to hold a mirror above a corpse while a pathologist cuts and digs and arrives at the assumption that preceded the cool science as the conclusive answer - Society, class, race, gender-envy did it!

Brownson disagrees.  American scholars can get their heads around human sin; therefore, ignore it. Brownson flies in the face of Thoreau who went deep into the woods in order to live life 'deliberately,' but had his Mom truck out to his cabin with baskets full of brownies, cookies and preserved treats. Brownson denied the democracy that is the gilt paint and mascara of Henry James' Yanks abroad. Brownson was vilified by William Lloyd Garrison as a copperhead Papist, but gave two sons on Lincoln's altar of sacrifice to the Abolitionist cause. These icons of  American thought and literature taught us to parse as a people and embrace Dewey, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and public everything.

Orestes Brownson was a Protestant (Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Unitarian)  who never allowed the sun to set on his own sins against God and in order to become as good a protestant, he was required to become a Catholic.  American writers can born Catholic, but they must be 'fallen away' Catholics, like Fitzgerald, Dreiser,  Wolfe, O'Neill, O'Hara, Ferlinghetti, Farrell, or silent Catholics like Flannery O'Connor.  Orestes Brownson will remain out of the American intellectual mainstream and the canon of American literature.

Orestes Brownson should have a place in American Catholic education - a very prominent place.

* A sermon delivered by the Rev.R. Paul Mueller to the Unitarian Society of New Brunswick on September 14, 1997 was completely free of any reference to Orestes Brownson's conversion to Roman Catholicism. Interestingly, Rev. Mueller speaks of the 'religious person, rather the spiritual persons' frustrations and ultimate cynicism when confronted with the social injustices and draws in another 'frustrating' Catholic - Mother Theresa.  No mention of sin. Always 'sombody else's troubles' - American intellectualism in sum.

His childhood was passed on a small farm with plain country people, honest and upright Congregationalists, who treated him with kindness and affection, taught him the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the Assembly's Catechism; to be honest and industrious, truthful in all circumstances, and never to let the sun go down on his wrath. With no young companions, his fondness for reading grew rapidly, though he had access to few books, and those of a grave or religious nature. At the age of nineteen he had a fair knowledge of grammar and arithmetic and could translate Virgil's poetry. In October, 1822, he joined the Presbyterian Church, dreamed of becoming a missionary, but very soon felt repelled by Presbyterian discipline, and still more by the doctrines of unconditional election and reprobation, and that God foreordains the wicked to sinnecessarily, that He may damn them justly. Rather than sacrifice his belief in justice and humanity on the altar of a religion confessedly of humanorigin and fallible in its teachings, Brownson rejected Calvinism for so-called liberal Christianity, and early in 1824, at the age of twenty, avowed himself a Universalist. In June, 1826, he was ordained, and from that time until near the end of 1829, he preached and wrote as a Universalistminister, calling himself a Christian; but at last denying all Divine revelation, the Divinity of Christ, and a future judgment, he abandoned the ministry and became associated with Robert Dale Owen and Fanny Wright in their war on marriage, property, and religion, carried on in the "Free Enquirer" of New York, of which Brownson, then at Auburn, became corresponding editor. At the same time he established a journal in westernNew York in the interest of the Workingmen's Party, which they wished to use for securing the adoption of their system of education. But, besides this motive, Brownson's sympathy was always with the labouring class, and he entered with ardour on the work of elevating labour, making it respected and as well rewarded in its manual or servile, as in its mercantile or liberal, phases, and the end he aimed at was moral and social amelioration and equality, rather than political. The introduction of large industries carried on by means of vast outlays of capital or credit had reduced operatives to the condition of virtual slavery; but Brownson soon became satisfied that the remedy was not to be secured by arraying labour against capital by a political organization, but by inducing all classes to co-operate in the efforts to procure the improvement of the workingman's condition. He found, too, that he could not advance a single step in this direction without religion. An unbeliever in Christianity, he embraced the religion of Humanity, severed his connexion with the Workingmen's Party and with "The Free Enquirer", and on the first Sunday in February, 1831, began preaching in Ithaca, New York, as an independent minister. As a Universalist, he had edited their organ, "The Gospel Advocate"; he now edited and published his own organ, "The Philanthropist".
Finding, from Dr. W.E. Channing's printed sermons, that Unitarians believed no more of Christianity than he did, he became associated with thatdenomination, and so remained for the next twelve years. In 1832 he was settled as pastor of the Unitarian Church at Walpole, New Hampshire; in 1834 he was installed pastor of the First Congregational Church at Canton, Massachusetts; and in 1836 he organized in Boston "The Society for Christian Union and Progress", to which he preached in the Old Masonic Temple, in Tremont Street. After conducting various periodicals, and contributing to others, the most important of which was "The Christian Examiner", he started a publication of his own called "The Boston Quarterly Review", the first number of which was dated January, 1838. Most of the articles of this review were written by him; but some were contributed by A. H. Everett, George Bancroft, George Ripley, A. Bronson Alcott, Sarah Margaret Fuller, Anne Charlotte Lynch, and other friends. Besides his articles on literary and philosophical subjects, his political essays in this review attracted attention throughout the country and brought him into close relations with the leaders of the Democratic Party. Although a steadfast Democrat, he disliked the name Democrat, and denounced pure democracy, called popular sovereignty, or the rule of the will of the majority, maintaining that government by the will, whether that of one man or that of many, was mere arbitrary government, and therefore tyranny, despotism, absolutism. Constitutions, if not too easily alterable, he thought a wholesome bridle on popular caprice, and he objected to legislation for the especial benefit of any individual or class; privileges, i.e. privatelaws; exemption of stockholders in corporations from liability for debts of their corporation; tariffs to enrich the moneyed class at the expense of mechanics, agriculturists, and members of the liberal professions. He demanded equality of rights, not that men should be all equal, but that all should be on the same footing, and no man should make himself taller by standing on another's shoulders.
In his "Review" for July, 1840, he carried the democratic principles to their extreme logical conclusions, and urged the abolition of Christianity; meaning, of course, the only Christianity he was acquainted with, if, indeed, it be Christianity; denounced the penal code, as bearing with peculiar severity on the poor, and the expense to the poor in civil cases; and, accepting the doctrine of Locke, Jefferson, Mirabeau, Portalis,Kent, and Blackstone, that the right to devise or bequeath property is based on statute, not on natural, law, he objected to the testamentary and hereditary descent of property; and, what gave more offence than all the rest, he condemned the modern industrial system, especially the system of labour at wages. In all this he only carried out the doctrine of European Socialists and the Saint-Simonians. Democrats were horrified by the article; Whigs paraded it as what Democrats were aiming at; and Van Buren, who was a candidate for a second term as President, blamed it as the main cause of his defeat. The manner in which he was assailed aroused Brownson's indignation, and he defended his essay with vigour in the following number of his "Review", and silenced the clamours against him, more than regaining the ground he had lost, so that he never commanded more attention, or had a more promising career open before him, than when, in 1844, he turned his back on honours and popularity to become a Catholic. At the end of 1842 the "Boston Quarterly Review" was merged in the "U.S. Democratic Review", of New York, a monthly publication, to each number of which Brownson contributed, and in which he set forth the principles of "Synthetic Philosophy" and a series of essays on the "Origin and Constitution of Government", which more than twenty years later he rewrote and published with the title of "The American Republic". The doctrine of these essays provoked such repeated complaints from the editor of the "Democratic Review", that Brownson severed his connexion with that monthly and resumed the publication of his own review, changing the title from "Boston" to "Brownson's Quarterly Review". The first number was issued in January, 1844, and the last in October, 1875. From January, 1865, to October, 1872, he suspended its publication.

Fabulous Fib : Manya Brachear's "Illinois Clergy Endorse Gay Marriage Bill"

Manya - The Seeker
View Larger Map Each dot represents a church and there are 10,360 churches in Chicago and a thick number in Auburn Gresham

More than 250 faith leaders, many from Chicago, back measure that could face vote in January -Manya Brachear the Chicago Tribune's Seeker

And you shall find that Manya Brachear numbers of support for Greg Harris's Gay Marriage Bill are underwhelming.

Consider this, The Archdiocese of Chicago which represents and shepherd's more than 2.3 million Catholics in Cook and Lake Counties numbers 3,325 clergy persons on its rolls alone:

• Diocesan Priests (including active and retired): 791
• Religious Priests: 710
• Religious Brothers: 250
• Women Religious: 1,781
• Permanent Deacons: 559
• Certified Pastoral Associates: 164

Total of 3, 325 persons numbered as clergy within the Roman Catholic  Archdiocese of Chicago alone.

 Manya's total smacks up a tiny 7% of that clergy demographic alone.  Now add to the total of Catholic clergy the reported 1,190 clergy of other denonminations for a total of 4,515 that percenatge drops to 5.7%



Liars figure and figures do lie - Now, this I know. There are 10,360 churches listed in the city of Chicago, each with a pastor/clergy person doing the shout-out to the Lord.  I dare say that most are not Catholic. Now, that makes the number of clergy listed as a bit light. If there are 10,360 and only 4,515 clergy persons -what's up with that, Manya?  That head-scratcher needs a Seeker.

Take a peek at the map of Churches in Auburn Gresham up above.

Let's consider one Chicago neighborhood that I am familiar with -Auburn Gresham.   I drive each morning from Morgan Park to Leo High School and I take either 79th Street from Western Ave east, or 87th Street to Racine.  Between 87th Street and 79th Street on Racine alone there more than 20 African American Churches operated by clergy persons and that is a matter of a mere eight(8) city blocks. Here's the pay-off there are 10,360 churches listed in Chicago and a very thick number of those in this neighborhood alone.

I dare say, there might be one or two pastors in this demographic in full communion with Manya and Boss Terry Cosgrove and Representatives Heather Stearns and Greg Harris and media mogul Fred Eychaner, but I seriously doubt that the other 10,358 Chicago pastors favor Gay Marriage.  I could be wrong.

The Seeker and the Chicago Tribune, as well as the Gay Community are very happy that 260 clergy support Gay Marriage.  That is fabulous.

CPS/CTU A Skunk Fighting a Raccoon - Catholic Schools Open Everyday!!

It's All About the Children! All is relative and as John Dewey demands of American Public Education All must be Verifiably Satisfying.  Got that?

I got it years ago, when I studied Philosophy of Education at Loyola University.  Truth is a moveable feast for John Dewey that begins and ends with "Inquiry."

Inquire about leadership in American Public Education -Arne Duncan e.g.

Inquire about Chicago political leadership: Rahm's busy raising cash from Hollywood and what's left of 1%-ers for Obama.

Inquire about the  Public Service Union Solidarity - SEIU is set to cross the picket lines.

Inquire about a 19% increase in an average public salary that amounts to $ 71,000 per annum.

Inquire about length of school day.

Inquire about tenure, accountability, pension, health benefits, sick-days, and school calendars/

Inquire about test scores, college placement, drop-out rates.

If one must, do inquire. Like I said, I got it ( as in understood John Dewey education as a pernicious,  power mad and "cosmic impiety" that assaults truth).



In the next 24 hours, either CPS will cave and toss more money to Karen Lewis in verifiably satisfying manner, or a strike will take place in verifiably satisfying manner.  Either way, it is the public education you, the taxpayer, votes for, agrees whole-heartedly with, or must live with.

In any event, Catholic Schools in Chicago will be open for learning, sharing and strengthening the values God finds verifiably satisfying. In today's Gospel from Mark, Jesus cures a deaf-mute.  Get a load of these beauties!




Chicago Public education is a skunk fighting a raccoon, in my empirical understanding of its dysfunctional operations.



Stock up on the moral and education tomato juice, Citizens, or get used to smell.

Cardinal George Schools Rahm - Complete and Untouched from Chicago Catholic Blog

Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone what are the “values” that must be held by citizens of Chicago. I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval. Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city? Is the City Council going to set up a “Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities” and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it? I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, “un-Chicagoan.”
The value in question is espousal of “gender-free marriage.” Approval of state-sponsored homosexual unions has very quickly become a litmus test for bigotry; and espousing the understanding of marriage that has prevailed among all peoples throughout human history is now, supposedly, outside the American consensus. Are Americans so exceptional that we are free to define “marriage” (or other institutions we did not invent) at will? What are we re-defining?
 It might be good to put aside any religious teaching and any state laws and start from scratch, from nature itself, when talking about marriage. Marriage existed before Christ called together his first disciples two thousand years ago and well before the United States of America was formed two hundred and thirty six years ago. Neither Church nor state invented marriage, and neither can change its nature.
Marriage exists because human nature comes in two complementary sexes: male and female. The sexual union of a man and woman is called the marital act because the two become physically one in a way that is impossible between two men or two women. Whatever a homosexual union might be or represent, it is not physically marital. Gender is inextricably bound up with physical sexual identity; and “gender-free marriage” is a contradiction in terms, like a square circle.
Both Church and state do, however, have an interest in regulating marriage. It is not that religious marriage is private and civil marriage public; rather, marriage is a public institution in both Church and state. The state regulates marriage to assure stability in society and for the proper protection and raising of the next generation of citizens. The state has a vested interest in knowing who is married and who is not and in fostering good marriages and strong families for the sake of society.
The Church, because Jesus raised the marital union to the level of symbolizing his own union with his Body the Church, has an interest in determining which marital unions are sacramental and which are not. The Church sees married life as a path to sanctity and as the means for raising children in the faith, as citizens of the universal kingdom of God. These are all legitimate interests of both Church and state, but they assume and do not create the nature of marriage.
People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and, of its nature, for life. The laws of civilizations much older than ours assume this understanding of marriage. This is also what religious leaders of almost all faiths have taught throughout the ages. Jesus affirmed this understanding of marriage when he spoke of “two becoming one flesh” (Mt. 19: 4-6). Was Jesus a bigot? Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan? Would Jesus be more “enlightened” if he had the privilege of living in our society? One is welcome to believe that, of course; but it should not become the official state religion, at least not in a land that still fancies itself free. Surely there must be a way to properly respect people who are gay or lesbian without using civil law to undermine the nature of marriage.
Surely we can find a way not to play off newly invented individual rights to “marriage” against constitutionally protected freedom of religious belief and religious practice. The State’s attempting to redefine marriage has become a defining moment not for marriage, which is what it is, but for our increasingly fragile “civil union” as citizens.

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

 http://www.archchicago.org/blog/comments.aspx?postID=276

Chances of a Catholic Vote for Obama

Ask a Catholic today at the Rally for Religious Liberty in Federal Plaza ( 50 W. Adams) at High Noon today!

Consider!

http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=27468
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/religious-freedom-movement-holding-new-national-rallies-june-8/
http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/conscience-protection/