Education is About Vision, Authority and Concern - And Then There is the Department of Education.

On May 9th 1852 in Baltimore, the Pope appointed Apostolic Delegate Archbishop Kenrick who opened the First of Three American Plenary Councils that included six archbishops thirty five suffragan bishops, provincial heads of the religious orders and other prelates.

Twenty Five decrees were issued one of which - the establishment of Catholic schools in each parish to be overseen by the pastor.

Decree 13.Bishops are exhorted to have a Catholic school in every parish and the teachers should be paid from the parochial funds.

Subsequently,

Title ix, Of the Education of Youth.-(i) Of parish schools. Teachers belonging to religious congregations should be employed when possible in our schools. The latter should be erected in every parish. For children who attend the public schools, catechism classes should be instituted in the churches. (ii) Industrial schools or reformatories should be founded, especially in large cities. (iii) A desire is expressed to have a Catholic university in the United States.

And finally,

Title vi, Of the Education of Catholic Youth, treats of (i) Catholic schools, especially parochial, viz., of their absolute necessity and the obligation of pastors to establish them. Parents must send their children to such schools unless the bishop should judge the reason for sending them elsewhere to be sufficient. Ways and means are also considered for making the parochial schools more efficient. It is desirable that these schools be free. (ii) Every effort must be made to have suitable schools of higher education for Catholic youth.

Vision, Authority and Concern were the three legs of the Catholic model that has become the foundation for morphing of public schools - Charter Schools are Catholic Schools without God of course.

Education requires Vision - A view of a systematic approach to teaching the acquired mastery of shared knowledge and wisdom needed; Authority - the dissemination of thought, method and purpose should lie in the care of a master teacher who connects to a higher authority; Concern - an operational organization and oversight that recognizes the shared Vision and Authority.

Then we have the United States Department of Education - “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively; or to the people.”



,

established in 1977, because . . . ?

Where there is no vision, the people perishProverbs 29:18 . . .however, that maxim, or aphorism, or dare I say it proverb is not allowed in public education.

Money is all that is needed by the Department of Education.

Catholic schools flourished in America, because of Vision, Authority, and Concern. The Authority thing is always a sticking point for the John Dewey - "Well, Who's to Say" crowd. "Who's to say that teaching X-Men is not more likely to stop bullying of 'questioning adolescents, than offering Henry V? Besides, Mr. Navel has never read Henry V, or anything by that misogynist Hemingway." The Baltimore Councils banned books that were 'considered' bad for Catholic school kids - bad because they lured innocent, ignorant and independent little minds away from the Vision. That takes Care, or Concern.

Secretary Duncan leads a Federal Department that seems to be lacking vision. Secretary Duncan demonstrates a solid lack of authority in the piece above and who Cares?

Education in American needs radical transformation - witness the recent nonsense at one of America's most prestigious schools -Northwestern. American essayist and retired Northwestern professor Joseph Epstein writes in The Weekly Standard

That so many of the faculty at Northwestern had no qualms about her proselytizing students is noteworthy. But then there is always faculty ready to back up the most egregious behavior of colleagues. In the case of J. Michael Bailey, the Chronicle of Higher Education chimed in with an article by an assistant professor of sociology at Middlebury College named Laurie Essig, who finds the Northwestern sex scandal, as we now say, a great learning moment. Professor Essig is of the view that shaking things up, attacking the status quo, is of the very essence of education, what the whole enterprise is really about.

“Clearly,” Essig writes, “this ‘live sex act’ triggered a national conversation about what we can and cannot look at.” She goes on to ask “what is it about the fact that there were people there on the stage that makes it different than a film with a sex scene or a book with a sex scene? . . . Why are we so damn uncomfortable with sex that is not mediated by film or text that ABC, CNN, and all the rest of the media outlets can’t stop talking about it?” Essig even wonders if “the live sex act had occurred between a straight, vanilla, normatively gendered and married couple, would we have cared as much?” She concludes: “These all seem like important questions and questions that can be asked because a professor allowed something to happen in his classroom and triggered a national debate about the dangers
of sex and education getting into bed together.”

Professor Essig joins Professor Bailey as one of the university’s shock troops. A student I talked with, who had earlier taken Bailey’s human sexuality course and who did not otherwise speak harshly of him, noted that he seemed more than normally pleased to shock his audience of students. Does Professor Bailey, one has to wonder, thrill to his own acts of épater les bourgeois? Does he, so to say, get off in his combined role as Pied Piper, Krafft-Ebing, and the Diaghilev of the kinky?

Where is the Vision? Where the Authority? Sex toys for a liberal education and grounding in the shared wisdom of ages;teachers of English who can not spell Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Emily Dickinson have become the common feature and money is the only answer. Concern? Who Cares?

Many do.

Like this skilled tradesman who responded to Illinois SEIU's Progress Illinois warning about School Choice 'bubbling up' again in Springfield, Illinois with a voucher legislation proposal,

Vouchers offer a way out of the expanding cost of education in the state of Illinois.

Give every kid a voucher for use at the choice of their parents. Public, private, it should make no difference.

If public school are superior they will overwhelm the private schools. If Private school are superior they will overwhelm the public schools.

Labor unions can organize and represent teachers at whatever school they labor at. Unions fear private school because they're afraid they can't organize them and they don't want to extend the effort to organizing.

Free choices should be available to the citizens of the state of Illinois.

Bob Kastigar
IBEW Local 1220

http://www.progressillinois.com/posts/content/2011/03/14/vouchers-bubble-again-springfield

Chicago - The Most Catholic of Cities and Our Planned Parenthood Candidates

Here's a head-scratcher. Chicago is the most Catholic of American cities, but has absolutely no problem voting for politicians owned by Planned Parenthood. How's that?

Chicago is a City of Peasants, writes America's Montaigne, Northwestern University professor, essayist and short story writer Joseph Epstein in the most recent edition of the Weekly Standard about Rahm Emanuel.

Chicago is a city of peasants, or, more precisely, people of peasant background: Poles, Italians, Irish, Greeks, blacks. Peasants, I think it fair to say, don’t get Jews. And the Rahmbomb is an anti-Semite’s dream. He is wealthy, aggressive, he even took ballet lessons, for God’s sake; all the anti-Semitic stereotypes are in place, except for his not being highly cerebral.

I do not think that Rahm will have any trouble getting elected, but he will go a long way in encouraging more anti-Semites to Jew bait. Catholics who will beef about Rahm's ethnicity already vote for professed Catholics who bow and vow fealty to Planned Parenthood - the same mind-set that made lamp-shades of Jews from 1933-1945 and parse solidarity with Hamas today. Machs nicht.

Mr. Epstein is dead on point and his demographic should also include Mexicans, but his grouping had more to do with historical political clout, I believe. With the exception of blacks and Greeks, we are Catholic peasants -rooted in the soil and the Faith of our Fathers. Chicago is a most Catholic City -demographically 30% of the population of Illinois is Roman Catholic and Cook County is ground zero for Catholics.

Chicago Catholics tend to be Roman Catholic Democrats - a breed that has made peace with Planned Parenthood, God Help Us.

Planned Parenthood is a eugenics PAC that has succeeded in making Americans numb to the Cosmtic Holocaust. Unborn children have been accepted to be no more than 'tissue' and the murder of those children is 'choice.'

I have never been a Pro Life guy, but I have always been very anti-abortion. In 1984, a week after my daughter Nora was born, I got into a debate with a Pro Life activist at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee. He was invited to speak, not to a a religion class, but whole school at an assembly. The person who invited this wildly strident gent ( he is a real John Brown kind of guy) wanted to promote her book, that was written by students in her class. It was great marketing idea, but lousy educational professionalism. I said so, many times; but, the talk was set. The talk was wildly inappropriate and offensive. I said so in the assembly. The guy took wild offense with me - perhaps he was right -for questioning not his motives but his methods. I thought that was the end of things.

My wife and I received death threats and phone calls for months. Me and my big mouth.

It died down by February and I still had a job teaching English. The book writer left at the end of the year and made a ton of money - her students got not dime one. That was my experience with Pro Life.

I hate abortion.

Several years later, my heroic wife Mary fired her female obstetrician who suggested that she abort our son, because she was certain he would be born either with Downs Syndrome or spina bifida. Mary cut this elegant and trendy broad to ribbons -verbally, of course - and sent her packing. "So the Hell What? This is my Child, you bitch!" That is the clean version.

Abortion has become the cosmetic make-over for inconvenience and Americans have no patience for inconvenience. We of peasant stock understand and celebrate the inconvenience of children -healthy, sick, nice, mean, handsome and homely, they are all beautiful!

That said, I detest Planned Parenthood. They are a political PAC. One third of its funding was made available by politicians like Sen. Dick Durbin through federal funding and, more shame on me, channeled and directed here in Illinois by Gov. Pat Quinn, for whom I supported, worked and voted.

Both politicians are Irish Catholic Democrats who accept Planned Parenthood's blood money. Polish Catholic Congressman Dan Lipinski refuses it - God Bless Him!

Now, every Democratic candidate for mayor is supported by Planned Parenthood -Chico, Braun, DeValle, Emanuel, Walls. Chico was born Catholic, but I believe he converted to Judaism - making only DeValle the Catholic in the crowd. Miguel De Valle is the IVI-IPO Progressive Blue Chip Candidate and therefore Planned Parenthood approved.

Given the recent light shed on the horrors that are Planned Parenthood ( New York, Philly Kermit Gosnell's Slaughter of living babies and videos), is it not time for Catholic Chicago to ask some questions of the next mayor - whoever that may be?





Planned Parenthood takes in One Third of its funding to kill children from Federal Tax Dollars. Politicians need money to get and stay elected - I get it.'

I get this too - from to today's Gospel.

Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,
or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.
And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
Let what you say be simply `Yes' or `No'; anything more than this comes from evil.

Democratic politicians will hear the same Gospel and nod with conviction and think it has nothing to do with 'choice,' or their 'personal opposition to abortion' - much in the same way that I'll agree to somehow justify my vote for them - God help us.

It is long past time for Catholics, Jews, Protestants, and secular humanists to give Planned Parenthood the long goodbye.

Thackeray on Swift and Steele: My Morning's Oxymoron:Deeds Not Words in Writing

Facta Non Verba - Deeds Not Words is the motto of Leo High School. It is also a weltansschwang - a world view developing a human temperament and moral code.We can admire the talents and achievements of people without necessarily acting or aping their methods and motivations.

There are some genuinely nasty people breathing our air, folks, and many of them achieve the pinnacle of success and notoriety. Our age of group think censors opinion and inclinations of individuals who might deviate from the group. Most of group think stems from fear of embarrassment or worse. Why must Lady Gaga be accepted as a paragon of talent and taste? I'll let that one dangle.

This morning's task for your Blogger Boy is a return to the opinion of my favorite writer in the English language - not the greatest as that must be Shakespeare and not the most popular as that would be Dickens - William Makepeace Thackeray - author Vanity Fair and arguably the best historical novel of all time The History of Henry Esmond. Thackeray and Charles Dickens were contemporaries, acquaintances and rivals. Dickens is widely read and Thackeray merely admired today and that is unfortunate. Both Dickens and Thackeray travelled in and wrote about America before the Civil War: Dickens hated America and Americans ( called us 'spitting bipeds') and Thackeray loved this wild and youthful land and its people. In fact, Thackeray wrote a sequel to Henry Esmond set in Colonial/Revolutionary - The Virginians.

Thackeray lectured in America and was greeted with wild enthusiasm from Boston to Cincinnati. One of his lectures The 18th Century Humorists ( Addison, Pope, Swift, Steele, Goldsmith, and Congreve) is the source of my theme today - Facta Non Verba.

Thackeray could admire a great writer and still find him repulsive. For Thackeray a writer was no different than a baker, shoemaker, or banker. Each made money from the sales of his product. Thackeray was no better a man because of product - his books, essays, and poems. However, what a writer crafted should help his fellow man in some small way. Here is Thackeray's critical turn of mind.

Humor of the Human Heart - Thackeray's Template:

BESIDES contributing to our stock of happiness, to our harmless laughter and amusement, to our scorn for falsehood and pretension, to our righteous hatred of hypocrisy, to our education in the perception of truth, our love of honesty, our knowledge of life, and shrewd guidance through the world, have not our humorous writers, our gay and kind week-day preachers, done much in support of that holy cause which has assembled you in this place, and which you are all abetting,—the cause of love and charity, the cause of the poor, the weak, and the unhappy; the sweet mission of love and tenderness, and peace and good will toward men? That same theme which is urged upon you by the eloquence and example of good men to whom you are delighted listeners on Sabbath days is taught in his way and according to his power by the humorous writer, the commentator on every-day life and manners.
. . . I have said myself somewhere, I do not know with what correctness (for definitions never are complete), that humor is wit and love; I am sure, at any rate, that the best humor is that which contains most humanity, that which is flavored throughout with tenderness and kindness. This love does not demand constant utterance or actual expression, as a good father, in conversation with his children or wife, is not perpetually embracing them or making protestations of his love; as a lover in the society of his mistress is not, at least as far as I am led to believe, for ever squeezing her hand or sighing in her ear, “My soul’s darling, I adore you!” He shows his love by his conduct, by his fidelity, by his watchful desire to make the beloved person happy; it lightens from his eyes when she appears, tho he may not speak it; it fills his heart when she is present or absent; influences all his words and actions; suffuses his whole being; it sets the father cheerily to work through the long day, supports him through the tedious labor of the weary absence or journey, and sends him happy home again, yearning toward the wife and children.
This kind of love is not a spasm, but a life. It fondles and caresses at due seasons, no doubt; but the fond heart is always beating fondly and truly, tho the wife is not sitting hand-in-hand with him or the children hugging at his knee. And so with a loving humor: I think, it is a genial writer’s habit of being; it is the kind, gentle spirit’s way of looking out on the world—that sweet friendliness which fills his heart and his style. You recognize it, even tho there may not be a single point of wit, or a single pathetic touch in the page; tho you may not be called upon to salute his genius by a laugh or a tear. That collision of ideas, which provokes the one or the other, must be occasional. They must be like papa’s embraces, which I spoke of anon, who only delivers them now and again, and can not be expected to go on kissing the children all night. And so the writer’s jokes and sentiment, his ebullitions of feeling, his outbreaks of high spirits, must not be too frequent. One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humor; these ought to be true and manly in a man, as everything else in his life should be manly and true; and he loses his dignity by laughing or weeping out of place, or too often.

Jonathan Swift was recently raped by Hollywood with Jack Black's portrayal of Lemuel Gulliver. Dr. Swift, by Thackeray's measure was an absolutely miserable prique. The great Joseph Epstein, in a very recent edition of New Criterion, assessed Nobel Prize winner Chicagoan Saul Bellow in much the same way. Click my post title for Epstein's wonderful study of a literary giant and a human midget. But first read Thackeray on old Jack Swift!


Jonathan Swift *

If I do not love Swift, as, thank God, I do not, however immensely I may admire him, it is because I revolt from the man who placards himself as a professional hater of his own kind; because he chisels his savage indignation on his tombstone, as if to perpetuate his protest against being born of our race—the suffering, the weak, the erring, the wicked, if you will, but still the friendly, the loving children of God our Father; it is because, as I read through Swift’s dark volumes, I never find the aspect of nature seems to delight him, the smiles of children to please him, the sight of wedded love to soothe him. I do not remember in any line of his writing a passing allusion to a natural scene of beauty. When he speaks about the families of his comrades and brother clergymen, it is to assail them with gibes and scorn, and to laugh at them brutally for being fathers and for being poor. He does mention, in the Journal to Stella, a sick child, to be sure—a child of Lady Masham, that was ill of the smallpox—but then it is to confound the brat for being ill and the mother for attending to it when she should have been busy about a court intrigue, in which the Dean was deeply engaged. And he alludes to a suitor of Stella’s, and a match she might have made, and would have made, very likely, with an honorable and faithful and attached man, Tisdall, who loved her, and of whom Swift speaks, in a letter to his lady, in language so foul that you would not bear to hear it.

In treating of the good the humorists have done, of the love and kindness they have taught and left behind them, it is not of this one I dare speak. Heaven help the lonely misanthrope! be kind to that multitude of sins, with so little charity to cover them!

For Thackeray, a kind man should be emulated by his fellow creatures, while a louse could be admired. The kindest man of 18th Century British Literature, in Thackeray's estimation was Captain Dick Steele: playwright, wit, essayist, soldier and patriot.

Richard Steele **

Steele, as a literary benefactor to the world’s charity, must rank very high, indeed, not merely from his givings, which were abundant, but because his endowments are prodigiously increased in value since he bequeathed them, as the revenues of the lands, bequeathed to our Foundling Hospital at London, by honest Captain Coram, its founder, are immensely enhanced by the houses since built upon them. Steele was the founder of sentimental writing in English, and how the land has been since occupied, and what hundreds of us have laid out gardens and built up tenements on Steele’s ground! Before his time, readers or hearers were never called upon to cry except at a tragedy, and compassion was not expected to express itself otherwise than in blank verse, of for personages much lower in rank than a dethroned monarch, or a widowed or a jilted empress. He stepped off the high-heeled cothurnus, and came down into common life; he held out his great hearty arms, and embraced us all; he had a bow for all women; a kiss for all children; a shake of the hand for all men, high or low; he showed us Heaven’s sun shining every day on quiet homes; not gilded palace roofs only, or court processions, or heroic warriors fighting for princesses and pitched battles. He took away comedy from behind the fine lady’s alcove, or the screen where the libertine was watching her. He ended all that wretched business of wives jeering at their husbands, of rakes laughing wives, and husbands, too, to scorn. That miserable, rouged, tawdry, sparkling, hollow-hearted comedy of the Restoration fled before him, and, like the wicked spirit in the fairy-books, shrank, as Steele let the daylight in, and shrieked, and shuddered, and vanished. The stage of humorists has been common life ever since Steele’s and Addison’s time; the joys and griefs, the aversions and sympathies, the laughter and tears of nature.

The laughter and tears of nature is a precious blessing that is, it seems to me at times, a too easily dispensable set of commodities.

*Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish[1] satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier—or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.




**

Sir Richard Steele (bap. 12 March 1672 – 1 September 1729) was an Irish writer and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator.

Steele was born in Dublin, Ireland in March 1672 to Richard Steele, an attorney, and Elinor Symes (née Sheyles); his sister Katherine was born the previous year. Steele was largely raised by his uncle and aunt, Henry Gascoigne and Lady Katherine Mildmay.[1] A member of the Protestant gentry, he was educated at Charterhouse School, where he first met Addison. After starting at Christ Church in Oxford, he went on to Merton College, Oxford, then with joined the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry in order to support King William's wars against France. He was commissioned in 1697, and rose up in the ranks to captain of the 34th Foot in 2 years.[2] He disliked British Army life, and left the army in 1705, perhaps due to the death of the 34th Foot’s commanding officer, and with him, his opportunities of promotion. It may then, be no coincidence that Steele's first published work, The Christian Hero (1701), attempted to point out the differences between perceived and actual masculinity.

In 1706 Steele was appointed to a position in the household of Prince George of Denmark, consort of Anne of Great Britain. He also gained the favour of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford.

In 1705, Steele married a widow, Margaret Stretch, who died in the following year. At her funeral he met his second wife, Mary Scurlock, whom he nicknamed "Prue" and married in 1707. In the course of their courtship and marriage, he wrote over 400 letters to her. They were a devoted couple, their correspondence still being regarded as one of the best illustrations of a happy marriage, but their relationship was stormy. Mary died in 1718, at a time when she was considering separation. Their daughter, Elizabeth (Steele's only surviving legitimate child), married John Trevor, 3rd Baron Trevor.

Steele became a Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1713, but was soon expelled for issuing a pamphlet in favour of the Hanoverian succession. When George I of Great Britain came to the throne in the following year, Steele was knighted and given responsibility for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. While at Drury Lane, Steele wrote and directed The Conscious Lovers, which was an immediate hit. However, he fell out with Addison and with the administration over the Peerage Bill (1719), and in 1724 he retired to his wife's homeland of Wales, where he spent the remainder of his life.[3]

A member of the Whig Kit-Kat Club, Steele remained in Carmarthen after Mary's death, and was buried there, at St Peter's Church. During restoration of the church in 2000, his skull was discovered in a lead casket, having previously been accidentally disinterred during the 1870s.

Partial South Side Irish Sobriquet Glossary

In this month's issue of The New Criterion, essayist Joseph Epstein considers " The Long, Unhappy Life of Saul Bellow" whom Epstein attributes to have been afflicted with Irish Alzheimers - "he forgot everything but grudges."

Here are some more regional sobriquets and verbal brickbats.

South Side Chicago Irish sobriquets defined-
Irish Alzheimer's = Forget everything but their grudges.

Irish Arthritis = Stiffness in every joint but one, or " I get stiff in a different joint every night."

Irish Breakfast = Ice Cold Old Style or HammsTall Boyin the morning.

Irish confetti = Bricks.

Irish curse = All spuds and no meat.

Irish flu = Hangover.

Irish foreplay = "Hey! . . . You wake?."

Irish good-bye = Long time parting ways. e.g. - "So any way . . .Look you gonna go to Headsy Dillon's wake? Naw Fuck 'em. . . .Say Hi to your Bride and kids, by the way, as long as I got you here . . .look I'm a little short to pay day . . . Forgedid. No just kidding . . .that a new topcoat . . . I gotta go . . ."

Irish gravy = Brooks ketchup.

Irish handcuffs = A beer in each hand.

Irish hickey = Black eye.

Irish hospitality = When some soth sider gets pissed at you for not knowing what time it is.

Irish luggage = Hefty Garbage bags.

Irish Riviera = Long Beach Michigan/Delavan Wisconsin.

Irish seven-course meal = Potato and a six pack.

Irish Sports Page/Funnies = The obituaries.

Irish carry -out = A Slim Jim and an Old Style Tall Boy

Irish tan = Sunburn.

Irish twins = Two kids born of the same mother within a year's time - me and by brother Whitey are eleven months apart.

IRISH up your coffee = Add Bailey's and Jamesons.


Irish virus = rampant alcoholism.

Lace Curtain Irish/ or Bicycle Irish, Lace Curtain Mick =See: Irish Fellowship Lunch -Catholic, middle class, "proper", assimilated Irish. e. g. -Any Female Judge candidates with hyphenated Irish Names -Cathy Lawlor-Redmond-Burke ( code for "I'm a Gold-plated Bitch").

McCEO = housepainter

Shanty Irish = Working-class Irish. Quarrelsome; clannish; alcoholic.

Canaryville Suit = A pair of dress pants, or nice jeans, with a turtleneck, Banlon shirt,or Dago Knit and a sport coat/blazer over it, commonly seen at wakes and political parties.

Mt. Greenwood Suitcase = A County Fair Foods canvas bag with a towel and underwear in it for a quick trip to the Kankakee,IL.

Morgan Park Tuxedo = Adidas nylon running suit, brown cloth Mount Carmel scapular and black Johnson & Murphy wing-tips

Two Toilet Irish. See "Lace-Curtain Irish." any one on the east side of Western Ave. Affluence!!!!!

Pope Benedict Welcomes Anglicans - Epicopalians Who Woke Up.

There was a sociology of Protestantism that went: A Methodist is a Baptist with shoes. A Presbyterian is a Methodist who has been to college. An Episcopalian is a Presbyterian who is living off his investments. This has all changed now. Now an Episcopalian is, I suppose, someone heading a campaign against AIDS.

- Joseph Epstein 2003. Click my post title for a thoroughly charming and insightful interview with Joe Epstein.


When a south side Catholic got tired of going to Church he became a Unitarian. That way he could safely believe in anything without the moral and societal complications of explaining Atheism, or spelling Agnosticism.

The great American Master of the Essay, Northwestern University's Joseph Epstein - a guy who says, " Don't call me Professor; that's a guy who bangs on a piano in a Cathouse."- wrote a number of short stories grouped as Fabulous Small Jews.
This collection presented Jewish Chicagoans as witty, complex, bitter, confused and lovely people who are thoroughly American. None of the Phillip Roth angst, for Epstein, but rather people comfortable in their own skins - no polemical table thumping, or fiddling up on the garage roof at 6800 N. Campbell - he was replacing the loose shingles. I read Joseph Epstein's collection a few years ago. I need to go back to it, but I loaned the damn book to retired Detective Billy Higgins who in turn passed it on to Gene Callahan - an Armagh Carpenter who still has my back-up banjo. The Irish are the Bermuda's Triangle of loaned items.

Joseph Epstein writes about the relationship between people and the truth. Epstein - be it in Fiction or Essay -always nails it. We poor Chicago Irish have only Father Andy Greeley, who gets about as close to the truth as I do to the Confessional Box. Mea Culpa!

There is Hope! Pope Benedict XVI welcomes Anglicans ( Henry VIII's Theological children) back to the Faith.

The Apostolic Constitution approved by the Pope creates a new structure, which will allow Roman Catholic provinces such as England and Wales to have their own “Personal Ordinariate” for ex-Anglicans.

Parishes and individuals can go over to Rome en masse and join the Ordinariate. Although Catholic priests must be celibate, married former Anglican clergy who convert under the Apostolic Constitution could be ordained as Catholic priests although they would not be allowed to become bishops.

The Ordinariate could take the form of those created to care for Catholics serving in the Armed Forces and will be supervised by a senior cleric called an Ordinary, likely to be taken from the ranks of the former Anglican clergy.

It will provide spiritual care for the converts and they will be able to ask the Vatican to approve new liturgy based on their former Anglican readings, which they would hear at their own church services. They may be allowed to use Anglican prayer books.

However it is claimed there would be “formidable legal obstacles” to former Anglican parishes keeping hold of their old church buildings.

As many as 50 Anglican bishops worldwide are expected to convert under the new procedure and Cardinal Levada said the number of ordinary worshippers who had asked for such a provision was “in the hundreds”.

He added: "If there was a woman pastor in one of these groups, I would be surprised."

The leading Anglo-Catholic group in the Church of England, Forward in Faith, has warned repeatedly of a mass exodus to Rome if women are introduced to the episcopate without proper provision for those who object to the innovation.

While the group has so far remained within the Church of England to defend its place as the battle continues over women bishops, the landmark move by the Pope is likely to tempt many parishes away.

Forward in Faith said it “rejoiced” at the initiative, which it called a “decisive moment” in the history of the movement.

If Anglicans can start to see the intrinsic beauty and attraction of doctrinal and moral certainty, maybe we Catholics can become as comfortable in our skins as our Jewish neighbors reflected in the pages of Joseph Epstein's wonderful book of stories.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6386833/Pope-Benedict-XVI-paves-way-for-thousands-of-disaffected-Anglicans-to-cross-over-to-Rome.html

Stand With Our Jewish Neighbors -'How Come Cole Porter Never Wrote A Song About Rosh Hoshanna?'

Steve Miller Reporting
WBBM Newsradio 780


(WBBM/AP) - Both the American Jewish Committee and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee issued statements renounced the recent vandalism of several Chicago-area synagogues.

Police say vandals who set fire a fire at a prominent Chicago synagogue last month may also have sprayed "Death to Israel'' on the north suburban Lincolnwood Jewish Congregation over the weekend.

The head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Chicago says he needs to speak out now.

"I don't think we can speak out against any desecration of any mosques or churches in our community and then stand idly by and not speak out against desecration of religious institutions in other communities."

Well said, Pal! Let's take it a little further along the sidewalk.

The other day I remarked on the brilliant book/essay by America's greatest essayist, Joseph Epstein, on Fred Astair as part of the American Icon Series published by Yale Press. The book is prose writing at its best.

Joseph Epstein wrote a profound passage asking why American gentile song writers like Cole Porter never wrote a song about Rosh Shoshana or Purim. Given that the best Christmas Songs, White Christmas by Irving Berlin and Christmas Song by Mel Torme were written by Jewish Americans and Berlin also wrote Easter Parade.

It appears that American Jews celebrated their American neighbors and their traditions while remaining on the outside.

In our Celebrate Diversity, Happy Horse-shit Culture it would be nice to see a little return on this investment of the heart.

Loyola Man, Rabbi Elisha Prero*, confronted the vandalism done to his congregation over the weekend. His East Rogers Park Congregation was vandalized by idiots or anti-Semites - the roles are reversible. I wanted to see how many other ethnic groups stood in solidarity with our Jewish Neighbors.

One of my best friends growing up in Little Flower Parish on the south side - the Irish Catholic Riviera - was the late Danny Levi. Danny was one tough guy who poured out mounds of help to his Mick neighbors whenever anyone got sick or kids found themselves without parents. Danny Levi owned and operated the Irish Temple Pub which had a logo of a Shamrock in the Star of David.

I'll never forget Danny Levi's goodness to his pals and their families.

I hope that I never forget. Danny's relatives were tossed into ovens by people who went to Mass every Sunday and attended Protestant services with sober regularity.

Let's let Rabbi Elisha Prero know that his neighbors here in Chicago - Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist and Atheist understand what 'Never Again' means.

We don't need to write songs. We need to stand up once in while; let's let them know we do just that.


Young Israel of West Rogers Park
2706 W. Touhy Ave.
Chicago, Illinois 60645
(773) 743-9400


* Rabbi Elisha Prero

Rabbi Elisha Prero graduated with a B.A. in philosophy, Magna Cum Laude, from Loyola University of Chicago and received a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. He studied at Kerem B'Yavneh and Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel and received his Rabbinic Ordination from Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik at Brisk Rabbinical College. Rabbi Prero joined the law firm of Schuyler, Roche, Zwirner, and has been a partner since 2001. He is a member of the CRC, the Youth Commission of the Midwest Region of the NCSY, the musical group Evën Sh’siyah and has been rabbi of Young Israel of West Rogers Park for the past 10 years.

Joseph Epstein's 'Fred Astair' - 'A bit of color at the throat'

"I have always thought,that if one wants to be a writer, he must first make himself incompetent in everything else." Joseph Epstein

"In his essays, Epstein possesses a wealth of apt, obscure and effortless knowledge. In person, he is a man of anecdotes: conversation with him invariably anchored here and there by winsome, real life accounts. Indeed it seems nearly every story in this new collection has behind it an anecdote of equal charm." Doug Wagner from his interview with Joseph Epstein

Joseph Epstein is arguably America's best essayist. The litany of Professor Epstein's essays is a trail of delight:

Divorced in America: Marriage in an age of possibility (1974)
Familiar Territory: Observations on American Life (1979)
Ambition: The Secret Passion (1980)
Middle of My Tether: Familiar Essays (1983)
Plausible Prejudices: Essays on American Writing (1985)
Once More Around the Block: Familiar Essays (1987)
Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives (1988)
A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays (1991)
Pertinent Players: Essays on the Literary Life (1993)
With My Trousers Rolled: Familiar Essays (1995)
Life Sentences: Literary Essays (1997)
Narcissus Leaves the Pool: Familiar Essays (1999, paperback 2007)
Snobbery: The American Version (2002)
Envy (2003)
Friendship: An Exposé (2006)
Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide (2006)
In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage (2007)
Fred Astaire (2008)

Fred Astair was a Christmas gift to me. It is an Apollonian dance, a hard-crafted drift of breeze made warm and wonderful by the magic of practiced attention to detail. In pointing to Fred Astair's imaginative dress habits, Joseph Epstein's prose hovers above the dusty floor's saw-dust words of lesser craftsmen attempting a similar literary two-step on the subject:

' Astair was also good at throwing together what might appear normally discordant colors but which on him worked well. Brown suede loafers, say, with a taupe blue double breasted suit. Or, a buff colored, slightly beaten up fedora with a tuxedo. A French semiologist could doubtless do a lengthy and jargon-laden study of the colors of his socks. The point is that he made the normally discordant seem not in the least discordant but instead interesting, striking. Elegant is as elegant does.

Lots of people think Astair's sometimes wearing a necktie in place of a belt a fine flamboyant touch, but I am not among them. I thought it went over the line of flair and into the land of fey. He didn't do badly, though, with colorful silk bandanna's tied loosely around his throat. In later life, he understood that a bit of color at the the throat, along with covering over the sagging skin at the neck, enlivens an older face. His pocket squares were never too showy. He looked good in bathrobes, too though on him they were elevated to dressing gowns' Epstein (40-41).

Joseph Epstein is the Fred Astair of the essay. Though Fred tapped, waltzed, fox-trotted, and, sadly, assented to boogaloo at the end of his long career, Joe Epstein river-dances an endless but controlled shower of sound and sense from the wealth of his experiences and insights.

Though a book for the Star-struck guzzler of Hollywood fabulae and fauna, it is more of a treat to the audience of discerning readers and deep drinkers of the Pyrian Spring. Aunt Myrt will love the stuff about the back-stage life and servings of 'dish,' but lovers of prose will delight to witness Joe Epstein's graceful glides through the pages.

http://januarymagazine.com/profiles/jepstein.html