Back from St. Louis

It's a long drive from the Twin Cities to St. Louis, with a significant chunk of it in Iowa. With stops for gas and a meal, it's typically about a 10-hour trip. I spent most of my usual blogging time this morning trying catch up with the news I'd missed over the weekend, but I'm not convinced anything significant is actually happening.

I do like St. Louis generally and Saint Louis University in particular. It's a pretty campus in the heart of the city and it feels like a refuge from the urban squalor that is often associated with the area. We ate at good restaurants and enjoyed some excellent company. It's been, and will continue to be, a great place for Fearless Maria to attend college.

If you think something else merits discussion, please feel free to have at it in the comments section. I will be back to more regular blogging tomorrow.

The Faithful

We've been away a few days and there are countless things to discuss. Where to begin? We'll start here.

The primary order of business was bringing Fearless Maria to college. She is a student at Saint Louis University. She hasn't decided on a major yet, which seems wise inasmuch as she's only beginning her education tomorrow morning. SLU is a lot of things -- it's a mid-sized university with about 8,000 undergraduates. It's a Jesuit institution in a city with a large Catholic presence, but in a state that is part of the Bible Belt. It's a school that spends much of its time teaching its students practical things, with a heavy emphasis on STEM professions, especially in the medical field. It's an ambitious institution with a large endowment, north of a billion dollars, placing it in the top echelon of universities in the United States, although its renown does not match that of similar Catholic colleges such as Georgetown, Notre Dame, or Boston College. It lives in the considerable shadow of its neighbor five miles to the west, Washington University. It's a school that has benefited greatly from the pitched battles for students who seek to go to a top-echelon school, but fall just short for reasons that seem completely arbitrary. SLU lacks the glamor of Georgetown, but the substance of the education will be quite similar. It's also a long way from Minneapolis, every bit of nine hours by car. The city of St. Louis has its issues, but there are ample opportunities there. We are eager to see what happens in the next four years.

***

We returned to the Twin Cities on Friday and attended Mass at our home parish, St. Rose of Lima in Roseville. The presider at Mass was Archbishop Bernard Hebda, who was there to formally install our new pastor, Fr. Marc Paveglio. It was a lively Mass and it was a rare event to have the Archbishop in your house of worship. Hebda did not avoid the painful subject of clerical abuse, which continues to unfold. Many Catholics have turned away from the Church, but today's Gospel reading, from John 6, spoke directly to the question.

Many of Jesus' disciples who were listening said,

"This saying is hard; who can accept it?"

Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this,

he said to them, "Does this shock you?

What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending

to where he was before? 

It is the spirit that gives life,

while the flesh is of no avail.

The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.

But there are some of you who do not believe."

Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe

and the one who would betray him. 

And he said,

"For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me

unless it is granted him by my Father."

As a result of this,

many of his disciples returned to their former way of life

and no longer accompanied him.

Jesus then said to the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave?" 

Simon Peter answered him, "Master, to whom shall we go? 

You have the words of eternal life. 

We have come to believe

and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God."

Emphasis mine. Archbishop Hebda reminded us that we face the same question that Peter had to answer. The Church has made it easy, too easy, for people to leave, to go elsewhere. My sense is many Catholics are not becoming mainline Protestants, either, but rather turning away from organized religion entirely and, too often, turning away from God. I do not mean to diminish the horror of what too many priests and their superiors did to their victims, but the greater sin these men bear is that of turning away the faithful through their actions. Hebda's challenge, which Fr. Paveglio also shares, is to help us face the continuing reckoning, while also ensuring we do not lose faith, that we do not turn away from the promise of eternal life.

And the challenge continues, as today's headlines suggest:

In an extraordinary 11-page written testament, a former apostolic nuncio to the United States has accused several senior prelates of complicity in covering up Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s allegations of sexual abuse, and has claimed that Pope Francis knew about sanctions imposed on then-Cardinal McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI but chose to repeal them.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 77, who served as apostolic nuncio in Washington D.C. from 2011 to 2016, said that in the late 2000s, Benedict had “imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis” and that Viganò personally told Pope Francis about those sanctions in 2013.

Archbishop Viganò said in his written statement, simultaneously released to the Register and other media, (see full text below) that Pope Francis “continued to cover” for McCarrick and not only did he “not take into account the sanctions that Pope Benedict had imposed on him” but also made McCarrick “his trusted counselor.”  Viganò said that the former archbishop of Washington advised the Pope to appoint a number of bishops in the United States, including Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Joseph Tobin of Newark.

Archbishop Viganò, who said his “conscience dictates” that the truth be known as “the corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy,” ended his testimony by calling on Pope Francis and all of those implicated in the cover up of Archbishop McCarrick’s abuse to resign.   

By the way, Cardinal Tobin, who has his own issues, replaced Archbishop Hebda, who had been in Newark before Pope Francis sent him to St. Paul-Minneapolis. But let's set that aside for the moment. The real question is this: what do we make of this sensational allegation? Francis, above all else, is supposed to be a reformer, but if Archbishop Viganò is correct, Francis is an active participant in the continuing scandal. And it also raises another question -- what other forces were at play when Benedict XVI stepped aside? 

I have struggled with Francis since he became Pope. In important ways, he's been helping us focus on first principles, especially the importance of joining faith and good works. But in other ways, he's muddied the waters. Discernment is a continuing activity for Catholics; it has to be, really, because unexamined faith withers away. 

***

I had planned to get to John McCain and the continuing Trump circus, but that's enough for this evening. We'll get back to that and more in the coming days.

Drizzle

Not really a lightning round. Just a few random things:

• So the DFL is going to try to brazen it out on Ellison. They'd better hope Karen Monahan doesn't have a tape. I expect Tina Smith and maybe even the never-to-be-challenged Amy Klobuchar will get to answer a lot of questions in the coming days. The DFL will have a chance to do some message testing at the State Fair and if it breaks badly, you may yet see some maneuvering.
• We're getting ready to travel again, as Fearless Maria will begin studies at Saint Louis University next week. SLU has been in the news lately because it will be the first school to put an Amazon Echo Dot in every residence hall room. Is it Big Brother? Is it necessary? I'm guessing students will use the devices here and there, but it would not surprise me at all if most of them are unplugged and thrown in a desk drawer before too long. It's not particularly difficult to get information from other sources, so I'm guessing it won't be a big factor in FM's life.
• I get the sense that our favorite president (he says so himself) is about to flip the chessboard on the Russia game. That September 1 deadline his attorneys gave Robert Mueller has a larger meaning, I suspect. It could get interesting.
• The NFL has to figure out their rules about hitting the quarterback. My stance on the Anthony Barr hit on Aaron Rodgers was that it wasn't illegal, but it was unnecessary. The penalty called on Vikings linebacker Antwione Williams in Saturday's preseason game was frankly bizarre. Either you get to tackle the quarterback, or you don't, especially if he still has the ball. 

Back from SLU

We are back from our visit to St. Louis. Since we're catching up, let's drop a few bullets:

• Saint Louis University (SLU) has a lot of resources, including an endowment of over a billion dollars. That gives SLU a competitive advantage over many of its usual competitors. Money in and of itself doesn't guarantee successful outcomes for students, but it makes a big difference in things like physical plant and opportunities for overseas programs. 
• The city of St. Louis has a lot of issues, but the campus area is pretty nice. It sits a few miles to the west of the downtown area and immediately to the west of the SLU campus is the Central West End neighborhood, which reminded Mrs. D and I of the nicer sections of Chicago. Forest Park, a mile to the west of SLU, is a magnificent urban park that's more like Central Park in New York than anything here, although Como Park in St. Paul has some similarities. It looks like a good place to spend four years.
• Turning to politics, I have a question -- if you commit a crime in this country, are convicted, and are sentenced to prison, what happens to your children? Depending on your circumstances, a lot of things could happen. Your kids may end up living with your spouse, grandparents, other family. They could end up in foster care. One thing is certain -- they will be separated from you. Is that cruel? Sure, but it's one of many reasons you shouldn't get sent to prison. What's happening at the border now means parents are getting separated from their children. That's cruel, too. But it's also predictable. If anyone you know is shrieking "this is not what we are" on social media, they're not telling you the truth, or they're dumb.
• It sure seems like people in the DFL are in a hurry to send Ilhan Omar to Congress to replace Keith Ellison, Wonder why.
• We saw Incredibles 2 yesterday. I recommend it. It's not as flat-out brilliant as the original movie, but it's full of fun and it has some interesting things to say about our current world, especially social media. But to say too much would lead to spoilers, so I won't do that. Worth your time, for sure.

On the way

Arches are a thing down there

More traveling today. Light posting for a few days.

All's well that ends well (but all is not well)

Doing it for 200 years

We finally have things figured out and we now know Fearless Maria will be headed to Saint Louis University in the fall. SLU wasn't necessarily her first choice, but I'm pretty sure it will be the right choice in the end. I really think the college chase is out of control. So many kids are chasing so few spots that the competition is becoming absurd. I've seen it written that many schools wouldn't accept their alumni today -- the board scores and high school grade point averages that could get you into a high-level school 25 years ago wouldn't be nearly enough now.

Has the product improved that much? I don't think anyone who pays attention would make that argument. Every day brings new word of some outrage of political correctness or scandal. Some schools seem to have sold their souls. Our friend Bike Bubba has been covering the unfolding scandal at his alma mater, Michigan State University, with great interest and even greater dismay. The stories coming out of Saint Olaf, a school Fearless Maria briefly considered, are scandalous. And it's clear that places like Evergreen State College are asylums, not academe. We line up to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to such places.

For what it's worth, Benster's school, Knox College, does a good job of keeping speech free on its campus. In many ways, Knox is a typical liberal arts college and is crawling with portsiders, but I had a good feeling about Knox from the outset, an impression that was verified when I heard its president, Teresa Amott, make a specific point that incoming students needed to listen to all voices, liberal and conservative, during her remarks at the opening convocation four years ago. Based on what I know about SLU, Fearless Maria should have a similar experience.