Obama's Boring Rhetoric - Flat Earthers and Herring Chokers

Punching Above His Weight and Beyond His Pay Grade

I was underwhelmed by Barack Obama years ago, as a candidate for Congress, State Senator, South Side Irish Parade-walker, and he has lived up to my expectations as President.

Barack Obama always struck me as someone who told the same story, over and over and over and over. Jim Bowman, a Chicago newsman of great repute, posted this Danish observation about President Obama's Boring Rhetoric, once termed soaring rhetoric.



That boxing trope reminded me of the time I was handling the Illinois State Senator Barack Obama at the Lexington House at an amateur boxing night. My task was to bring celebrity trophy presenters to the square ring after a bout in order to award the pugilists. Senator Obama asked me, "Where's the gate?"

No, Senator, you climb through the ropes.

" I see."

Me too.

Man, even the herring chokers ( Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and other Vikings) know a flat fish when they catch one.


By the way, Yanks, how many times have you heard the "flat-earth" yarn these last two weeks?

The poor man has the personality of a dial tone.

Catholic Liturgical Ditties and Sacred Music

Music can trigger a wake up call for my better angels. The softer side of our selves is what makes us respond to our place here on earth and our understanding of that delicate and brief posture we show to the universe and the face of God. We might not know all about the art, the words, the tone, or the ritual taking place but we know that something we are experiencing takes us out of ourselves to someplace wonderful. We can only experience this mystical journey if we put ourselves exactly where it is possible: a library, a museum, a monument, a place of worship. We gotta go there.

Last night, I was swept up by the Nine Lessons and Carols Concert at St. John Cantius, where the works of Canadian Comper Healey Willan were performed. Healey Willan was commissioned to compose sacred music for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The St. Cecilia Choir performed his Hodie Carol. Hodie, Cristus Natus Est. Today Christ is born- declarative, simple and elegant. Sacred.

Catholic liturgy should use music with greater care and it does not. St. John Cantius is a parish on the north side of Chicago where the stated mission is to return God's people where they belong via the sacred. St. John Cantius is the Catholic Church many of us Baby Boomer and older Catholics remember. The entire atmosphere is reverent, beautiful and sacred. The music is exquisite and the performance by the St. Cecilia Choir under the direction of a non-Catholic, Dan Robinson more than matches the musical manuscripts.

The Sacred is rare in our culture. The sacred is parodied or dismissed in public life, education, politics, conversation and child care. Why else could we as a culture embrace everything anything as disposable - books, razors, friendships, and life itself. We seem to have replaced the Sacred with Sanctioned. I am as guilty of that most hours of the day.

My friend Jim Bowman, a dedicated career religious journalist, posed this issue at Blithe Spirit quoting from an article he read on Catholic Liturgical Music and the empty pews in the light of the recent Catholic Campaign to Return Home:

A long time Catholic of bourgeois sensibilities, a man who trying to hold on to his faith but doesn’t attend Mass on a regular basis, decides that it is time to try again. He goes to a parish not far from his house. The processional says to him: nothing has changed from the last time I tried this. He grinds his teeth throughout. By communion time, he is nearly losing his mind. The recessional hymn puts him over the top. He goes out to the parking lot cursing under his breath, mad all over again, recalling why he doesn’t go that often.

The problem is the music. It is bad pop music, shabbily done by people who nonetheless seem to be pretty proud of their performance. The entire Mass, the man keeps asking himself: how does it happen that the most beautiful liturgy, the product of 2000 years of tradition, could be reduced to this? More importantly, isn't there something that can be done about it?

There is, but, like everything else, the problem is more than fifty years of neglect that needs to be addressed. The Masses composed around the Big Six (Kyrie,Gloria,Credo,Sanctus,,Benedictus and Agnus Dei) by Cavalli, Bach, Mozart,Haydn, Beethoven, Liszt,Schubert,Verdi, Rossini and Antonin Dvořák, became as irrelvant as Latin, the Memorare and the Prayer of St. Michael.

The music became the property of Sister Sally and the Electric Prunes ( yes, the lads who brought us "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" composed an electric guitar Mass in F Minor) and local kids who played the guitar very badly. The Mass became relevant as Hell. It was profaned. I know profane inside and out, God help me. I do and get profane, much more than necessary, and it has its place.

There have been many modern compositions that are sacred and fitting to liturgy, but these are ignored, because parish liturgists have been trained to do their own thing.

Again, from article cited by Jim Bowman:

The number one issue, in my own view that has been formed over a decade of close study, is that the musicians themselves do not know better. Most people doing music in the Catholic Church do not even have a rudimentary understanding of the musical demands of the Roman rite. They do not know what parts of the Mass constitute the ordinary structure of the Mass. They do not know that the propers of the Mass exist. They have no idea how the music is related to the word or the calendar (apart from Christmas and Easter). They have no idea what is mandatory, what is an option, what is the Church’s choice, what is the publisher’s choice, what tradition consists of, or how to tell genuine liturgical music from nonliturgical music.

This is because they have never been told. And a reason that they have never been told is that very few people actually have this understanding at all. You can attend ten national conventions, read ten books, subscribe to all the major liturgy publications, troll websites all day, talk to your pastor and grill your predecessors, and still never discover these basic points about the Catholic liturgy and its musical demands. Yes, you will come away with some slogans and with the knowledge that “the people” need to participate but do not (it’s always easier to focus on the sins of others), but that’s about it.

The core information about the role of music is not known because it is not known, and this problem is not only serious at the grass roots; it goes straight to the top. Again, it is not malice that is preventing this knowledge from leaking out; it is just that so much information has been lost during these confusing decades that there are very few around that truly get it.

Want to get it?

Here is a pretty good tutorial that helps us understand the difference.

Can you tell the difference?? from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.

That's a baby step. We need to walk into Sacred Places to experience the Sacred. You'll know it.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healey_Willan
http://www.chantcafe.com/search/label/Jeffrey%20Tucker

http://blithespirit.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/read-this-and-weep-ye-pewsitting-catholics/

Catholic Hierachy's Gay Cabal-leros of Miami - A Sickening Tale of Hypocrisy within and outside of The Church

John Favalora, the Archbishop Emeritus of Miami. The Lavender Mafia's Don.


Jim Bowman is a Catholic journalist and one-time Religion writer for the Chicago Daily News. Mr. Bowman runs a blog called Blithe Spirit and it is a singularly well-written and genteel site. Jim Bowman is a gentleman.

http://blithespirit.wordpress.com/

Jim Bowman posted an investigation of recently conducted and reported on the Homosexual networking through the Miami Archdiocese.

The Priest-Sex Scandal raised the issue of homosexuality within the ordained clergy and immediately that aspect was smothered. The meme for any further discussion within the Church and by the media turned to - pedophilia has nothing to do with homosexuality. Likewise, we should all consider winter as a season without mentioning temperatures below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit and never, ever mention snow.

The priest pedophile scandal was handled miserably by the Catholic bishops of America and continues to be the talking point for homosexual marriage, adoption, banquet hall selection and insurance matters. Any and all questioning of the legality of Civil Unions, much less Same-sex marriage arouses a ready chorus of Eumenides screeching,'The Church that rapes little boys!' End of discussion.

I imagine that too many bishops turned a blind eye on homosexual activities in American seminaries, in order to maintain class-sizes for ordination, in much the same way as a bar owner in a lousy neighborhood tolerates bust-outs and slobs spitting on the floors. Got to keep the bar stools covered.

Jim Bowman, like most Catholics, is completely appalled by the pedophile scandal and the cover-ups that played into the hands of anti-Catholic Planned Parenthood, Gay activists, political hacks, and ambulance chasing lawyers like Jeffery Anderson the legal genius who unofficially operates SNAP.

Jim, linked a thoroughly disgusting saga of the homosexual subculture operated with the blessings and participation of Miami Archbishop Emeritus John C. Favalora:

Here are just some of the un-Catholic behaviors that "Miami Vice" accuses Favalora of engaging in: He partially owned a company that manufactured Yohimbe, an aphrodisiac beverage marketed to horny club-kids with the promise of "the hands-down best sex of your life." He allegedly took frequent trips to fabulous Key West with his gay associates. He was over-familiar toward his seminarians. (One ex-employee of the diocese recalls him telling a young seminarian at a gathering to "Come to papa and sit on my lap.") Favalora's second- and third-in-command, Monsignor William Hennessey and Monsignor Michael Souckar, are both accused by Christefidelis of being active homosexuals—and if they are, that counts among the least of their difficulties with Catholic orthodoxy.

In fact, the Archdiocese was a hotbed of sodomy long before Favalora set foot in Florida. Two unrelated sources, both priests, speak of a flamboyantly gay bishop in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, named Miguel Rodriguez Rodriguez, who was known to his pupils as "Lili." These sources claim that during the 1970s and 80's, Lili treated Arecibo like his own personal harem, urging cute young men into the priesthood and plying them with gifts and money in exchange for sexual favors. Rome allegedly interceded in 1990 and banished Lili to a secluded monastery, where he remained until his death 20 years later. Several of Lili's erstwhile pupils landed in Miami in the 80's and 90's. Naturally, they were disinclined to take their celibacy oaths too seriously.

Priests speak, too, about the culture of "sex-driven favoritism" at St. John Vianney College Seminary—a kind of gay Hogwarts with palm trees, located out in the flat suburban wastes of southwest Dade County. Seminaries are traditionally gay places—Papist wits refer to Notre Dame seminary as "Notre Flame," Theological College as "Theological Closet," Mundelein as "Pink Palace," and so on. But St. John Vianney was special. One seminarian who dropped out in disgust in the 1980s recalls a miserable year being bullied by gay faculty, and the rector, Robert Lynch, fawning over his favorite seminarian: an attractive upper-classman named Steven O'Hala. The dropout also recalls Lynch installing a camera in the seminary's weight room to capture images of pumped, sweaty seminarians. (He is now a minister in a liberal Christian denomination, and says he has no beef with gay people.)

I know of no Catholic who has a beef with gay people. There are some, I am sure, but I do not travel in such company. Likewise, I try to stay on the other side of the street when I see a pack of Progressives. I have yet to meet one Progressive who would give a penny to a starving blind girl - that child should not have been born, or can just wait until a government agency can pass her the gruel.

Click my post title and read the entire disturbing piece. Manya Brachear, or the ever daffy Cathleen Falsani, will not step into these waters.

Thank's Jim! Maybe someday real journalists will be given pay checks again.

Here's few more reports:

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2011/07/archbishop_favalora_accused_of.php
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/giunta/110729