NCR Today

Democracy is sometimes raucous

Michael Sean Winters | Aug. 11, 2009

The shouting down of senators and congressmen at town hall meetings convoked to discuss health care is not an entirely bad thing. After all, American democracy has never been as sublime an exercise as people like to think. Those who bend their knee at the mention of the founders would do well to acquaint themselves with the election of 1800. Two candidates with unimpeachable credentials as founders, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, were pitted against each other in a contest that attained high levels of vitriol. Democracy is not, per se, less effective because it is a bit raucous.

Slump strains church finances as need grows

Tom Gallagher | Aug. 11, 2009

Houses of worship and faith communities across the country are cutting budgets and staff and at the same time are being pulled to do more, according to this Wall Street Journal story:

Across the country, congregations of all sizes and denominations are struggling with issues of faith and finance as the recession grinds on. Churches are scouring their budgets for wasteful spending. And many, like Bent Tree, have taken the unusual step of reducing staff.

While the collection plate no longer overflows, churches are seeing an increase in requests for support -- be it for spiritual guidance, monetary help or career advice. And religious leaders have the added task of explaining job losses and pay cuts in spiritual terms.

Churches, synagogues and mosques have historically fared reasonably well during recessions, even as other institutions struggled. But the magnitude of the current downturn has caught up with places of worship, too.

LCWR raises $7 million to assist New Orleans needy

Thomas C. Fox | Aug. 11, 2009

Under twin investigations from the Vatican, U.S. women religious leaders from around the nation have gathered in New Orleans for the three-day conference of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

The Vatican has called for twin investigations of the women, one of the leadership conference itself and the other of women religious communities. But instead of focusing on these investigations, the top agenda item on the first day of the gathering has been to board some 250 women on buses (they ran out of buses) to set off to visit the work of rebuilding the city that has been made possible by money raised by women in conjunction with Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities (FADICA).

The ghost of Tom Joad

Dennis Coday | Aug. 11, 2009

Yesterday I blogged about a video "Scraping By: Portraits of Life during the Great Recession," by filmmaker Stewart Thorndike, which documents a tent city for the homeless and unemployed on the grounds of St Jude's Catholic Church in Redmond, Wash.

"Shades of Tom Joad," commented frequent visitor to this site, Frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco) (not verified). The phrase "shades of Tom Joad" seemed familiar to me, so I googled it and was rewarded with a YouTube video of Bruce Springsteen singing: "The Ghost Of Tom Joad." (I can link to it, but unfortuantely permission to embedded it to other sites is restrecited.)

On that YouTube page is a comment by MrCopperhead1861 that is worth reading: "This was just played on a TV special for Pete Seger, granted, I'm not a fan, but when Bruce sang it, [it] was from his soul. It's scary to think this was written when I was a kindergartner and it seems more relevant now than then as our country moves toward the unknown."

Elected neediness

Rich Heffern | Aug. 11, 2009

Our modern culture has taught us that dependency on others, the need for friendship and community, are signs of weakness. Just think of one very popular cultural icon that we all grew up with -- those characters Clint Eastwood has always played in films (either the Man with No Name or Dirty Harry). Tough, flinty-eyed, hard-jawed independent men, they would single-handedly restore order to one of our crime-afflicted communities and then ride off alone just before the closing credits, while the rest of us clutched each other in wimpy embraces.

Cut your daily water usage in half easily

Rich Heffern | Aug. 11, 2009

Last year, UNICEF announced that humans need about five gallons of clean water a day to survive.

In the United States, we can easily use 400 gallons per household, per day — two to three times as much water as other developed nations. With landscape irrigation estimated at more than 7 billion gallons per day, the per capita numbers get even crazier. Why? Much of our waste stems from unsustainable planning and policies, and a deep sense of entitlement: We deserve it, so it must happen.

Remembering Eunice Shriver

Dennis Coday | Aug. 11, 2009

News media every where are reporting that Eunice Kennedy Shriver, younger sister of President John F. Kennedy and founder of the Special Olympics, died this morning. She was 88.

NCR columnist Coleman McCarthy wrote about Shriver in 2007. The usually curmudgeonly McCarthy began his column: "Whenever I've been with Eunice Kennedy Shriver, I've always come away thinking, 'I must become a better person.' "

Here is McCarthy's 2007 column: Energetic champion for the disabled.

'Hollywood Animal' to do Guadalupe movie

Heidi Schlumpf | Aug. 11, 2009

In a news story that contained, not one, but two groan-inducing puns, the Hollywood Reporter announced last week that screenwriter and director Joe Eszterhas is planning a movie on Our Lady of Guadalupe."He may have sanded his jagged edge, but Joe Eszterhas still, apparently, has the basic instinct," the story joked, in reference to two of Eszterhas' movies, "Jagged Edge" and "Basic Instinct."

Like I said, groan.

The Hungarian-born Eszterhas abandoned the sex, drugs and greed of Hollywood for a quiet family life in Ohio and a return to his Catholic faith after a bout with throat cancer a few years ago. He describes his former life in his first memoir, Hollywood Animal, and his conversion in his second, Crossbearer.

Morning Briefing

Joe Feuerherd | Aug. 11, 2009

Eunice Shriver Dies

New Sisters and Priests More Traditional

Church Protests Program Cuts in KS

Faith Leaders Back Health Reform

Statute of Limitations Bill Took its Toll

Countering distortions, attacks over health care reform

Tom Roberts | Aug. 10, 2009

In the visuals of the verbal muggings that some characterize as debate over health care reform, we (and I am grateful to this point) haven’t seen much of a discernibly Catholic presence. But the same vituperative, over-the-top language is out there on Catholic blogs. In the past it would have become the unchallenged “Catholic” point of view and its perpetrators the “experts” weighing in for the rest of the church.

So we might have seen the priest from pizza magnate Tom Monaghan’s Ave Maria University assert that the U.S. bishops have it wrong when they say that health care is a right -- and not hear a counter argument. Or the personal attacks on the nun who heads the Catholic Health Association might have gone unchallenged. However they are ably challenged here by John Gehring of Catholics in Alliance.

National Catholic Reporter

The Independent News Source

Democracy is sometimes raucous

Slump strains church finances as need grows

LCWR raises $7 million to assist New Orleans needy

The ghost of Tom Joad

Elected neediness

Cut your daily water usage in half easily

Remembering Eunice Shriver

'Hollywood Animal' to do Guadalupe movie

Morning Briefing

Countering distortions, attacks over health care reform

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