Author: Peter Schmitt

Let’s do something different today. Rather than talking about Mom’s death 25 years ago, let’s talk about her life, and an event in her youth, 50 years before her death, that perhaps helps us understand her a little better. In 1939, when she was 6, The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow was released. I am not sure when she first went to see it but the movie and the song capture much of Mom.

The movie marks the transition of cinema from black and white to color. For mom the visual splendor of Oz remained with her long after her vision had faded. The audio splendor of Over the Rainbow never left her. And the narrative of that song points at many aspects of Mom’s soul: dreams come true, life after death, unwavering faith.

So let me share a memory of my mother with you. Mom is at her piano, playing, “by ear,” with family and friends gathered around her. She played Chopin, Broadway, Gershwin, perhaps even Over the Rainbow. She’d take requests. She played the piano the way she lived her life. With gusto, conviction, passion, and love.

By the time her children were sitting around the piano listening to her play, her vision had faded, she saw at best some faint shadows, so she played by ear. Many, many pianists play by ear, and there are those of us too lazy to practice reading music, and playing be ear can be an easy way out. But for mom it was not just that she played by ear…

As a young child and into her late teen years, Mom studied piano, took lessons, and loved every minute of it. She read music. She loved playing sheet music and often went with her father (Gramps, Bapa) to buy newly released songs, including Over the Rainbow! All of that was shaken to its core and sorely tested as she began, at 17, to lose her vision. Soon she could no longer “read” music, she had to feel the music and play what she heard. Unable to “see” the notes with her eyes, she had to feel them. Play them. Even while losing her sight she found a way to adapt rather than quit and continued to play the instrument she loved. To the best of her ability, Mom, indeed, Mom’s family, lived by that creed.

As a young girl Mom saw her father, an extraordinarily strong man physically, a man with willpower and character in abundance, the son of German immigrants with perhaps just a touch of stubbornness, struggle against a crippling accident that robbed him not only of his sight but of many of his dreams. But Mom saw more, much more. She watched her father’s daily refusal to let the loss of his sight stop him from living as full a life as possible. She also watched as her father sensed, listened, and perceived much that the sighted could not see no matter how good their eyesight.

She also saw her mother, a woman forced by circumstance to find a way to make a living for her family. This woman, her mother, our Grandmother, had earlier refused to let her father’s behavior permanently separate her from her siblings. Nor did she allow that terrible accident to destroy her chance to build a family with her husband. Mom saw two parents who, though dealt a bad hand at the card game of life, not only did not fold the hand but played it for all it was worth.

So Mom was surrounded by this quiet determination in her home. It is no surprise, then, that she grew into a young woman with character, willpower, and determination. Of course a word of caution here. It was not good to be on the wrong side of Mom’s character, willpower and determination! I’ve often said that 9 years after Mom died I finally learned to tell her “no.” Disagreeing with Mom and her convictions was not for the faint of heart.

Mom also enjoyed an enormous well of faith and here I mean religious faith. How do I explain Mom’s faith? Well, on one level, Mom certainly was convinced that there was a special place, a technicolor paradise, over the rainbow. But Mom’s faith was much more than a belief in Oz (the afterlife or heaven). She was grounded in the values, traditions and practices of her faith and Church. Mom was serious in a way hard to explain today about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned. And praying. She lived what she believed.

*Over the Rainbow* captures some of Mom’s spirituality.

And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

Mom had big dreams, and many questioned how those dreams could come true as her sight continued to fade away. Nazareth College, marriage, and making a family, somehow they all did come true. Not without a fair amount of suffering and sacrifice, but they really did come true.

So today rather than simply remembering the day Mom went Over the Rainbow 25 years ago, let’s remember Mom’s life, how she lived it, her spirit and soul so captured by a song and a movie, released 75 years ago. A woman who saw much that those with sight did not. A woman of faith, character and determination, of strong opinions, who lived her values, loved her family and her Church, and who’s spirit remains with us today.

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow who oh why can’t I?

Click here for the full text of Adam Gopnik (from The New Yorker Magazine) Point of View text in today’s BBC Magazine.

To begin with, I think the French view of sex and life is essentially right and ought to be universally applicable: Sex with children or by force is wrong, and the rest is just the human comedy, unfolding, as it will. 

If indeed comedy, used in the classical sense, is a celebration of human sexuality and the triumph of eros, Gopnik makes a telling point. Too often Anglo Saxon morality views sexuality as a sort of tragedy, a Hamartia if I remember my Greek, where a  error or simple mistake can lead to the final catastrophe.

But if eros is the attempt to achieve fulfillment through a relation with another, then the French phase for sexual fulfillment, la petite mort, describes the paradox of our sexuality: surrender to the other, losing one’s self, a surrender that even flirts with death itself. Again, if I remember my Greek, Thanatos. 

Anglo Saxon morality, on the other hand, insists that the decision to marry settles the matter: one’s spouse is the person capable of bringing complete fulfillment. And it insists that the surrender to the other, the passion involved as two lose themselves in one, that Thanatos, will last a life time. This does happen, but the French (and the Classic Greek authors) are perhaps a bit more astute in noting that this process is comic in nature. There is no guarantee that it will happen with one’s chosen spouse. Indeed, many spend their lives moving from partner to partner seeking this eros.

Moreover it is not easily subjected to reason. It is instead sentimental, emotional, and unruly. Merlin, in Steinbeck’s The Acts of King Arthur and His Nobel Knights, puts it this way. 

In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins.

Apparently there was no combat between wisdom and feeling when Steinbeck wrote this, as his observation of the human condition is indeed wise and to an understanding of comic as understood in the Classics.

But Gopnik’s article doesn’t stop at simply observing the life and sexuality perhaps are better viewed as comedy. Noting the presses call for higher ethical standards of behavior by world leaders,  he goes on to face the question of character, specifically of those with power and authority. 

… by character, I think, we simply mean the power to refrain – to not do the things that we have every right and reason to do because there’s some other larger reason not to do them. And by character in leadership we mean just having the unusual capacity of being able to ask other people to refrain, without looking a prig or hypocrite while doing so

My own observation is that today’s powerful all seem to have NPD – Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The powerful seem obsessed with themselves and their own appetites. Perhaps it started as part of a balancing mechanism after the 60s. But it is about class, the powerful, the few. 

Right now, in France and elsewhere, ordinary people are being asked to take less from the state than they quite expected, and the rich are being asked to give more to the state than they quite want to. When the leader shows himself unable to control his own appetite, the symbolic message, larger than any political speech, is that the indulgence of appetite is not one among many goods, but an absolute good – one that trumps prudence, caution and risks, signalling that everyone needs to curb their appetites except for those with power.

Amen. But we’re not done. I’ve often noted that technology is born naked; it is up to humanity to clothe it. This is how culture is created. The French, at least according to Gopnik, look at appetite. They do not succumb to appetites, nor ignore them. Instead they are seen as normale. 

The point of great French dining is not that we should simply sit down and celebrate our appetites, but that we have to transform our hungers into civilized desires. Learning which fork to use means learning when not to. Self-righteousness about other people’s appetites is uncivilized. But not being able to control your own when the social occasion demands it is very bad manners.

Vive la France!

U.S. Poised to Overtake Russia as Largest Oil-and-Gas Producer

The U.S. is poised to overtake Russia as the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas this year, a startling shift that is reshaping energy markets and eroding the clout of traditional petroleum-rich nations.

Shale-rock formations of oil and natural gas have fueled a comeback for the U.S. that was unimaginable a decade ago. Russia meanwhile has struggled to maintain its energy output and has yet to embrace the technologies such as hydraulic fracturing that have boosted U.S. reserves.

Last night Ana and I went to see “The Glowing Lady” at Vicka’s Old Home site here in Medjugorje (click here to get more information). We were finally led into a small room where there is a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. The door is closed, the lights go out, and the Statue glows, very similar (though not as green) as the picture in the link above. 

If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.

During the Bosnian War Medjugorje remained in the hands of the Croatian Defence Council and in 1993 became part of the internationally unrecognized Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia. By the Dayton Agreement in 1995, Medjugorje was incorporated into the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, populated mostly by Bosniaks and Croats. It lies within the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, one of ten autonomous regions established so that no ethnic group could dominate the Federation.

The Conclave will begin on Tuesday. 

The Culture Wars: Benedictines versus the Bologna School

Governance: Reforming the Curia

Charisma: 

The New Evangelization: 

For the first time in recent memory, Africa offers four papabili to the Concalve: The Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, the South African Napier, and the Congolese Monsengwo Pasinya. The last African Pope was Gelasius I, from 492-496. 

Cardinal Robert Sarah is the most experienced of the group in dealing with Rome and the Vatican. Prefect of Cor Unum, the Vatican’s charitable agency, Cardinal Sarah is comfortable in both Africa and Rome. 

Today’s Il Stampa carries a fasciating article on a “papal ticket” (click here to read) consisting of Cardinal Odilo Scherer (São Paulo) for Pope with either Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, the Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy or Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, for Secretary of State. 

Cardinal Odilo Scherer – São PauloThe ticket is floated by two Curia heavyweights: Cardinals Angelo Sodano, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, and Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect Emeritus of the Congreation of Bishops). There are some indications that other Italian curial Cardinals are supporting this initiative. 

The article notes that this idea of “a ticket” has historical precedent. Apparently when John XXIII was elected a similar understanding developed. Regardless, the political calculus goes something like this: Scherer is a Latin American in the largest Catholic country in the world. This plays well on the world stage. Scherer worked at the Curia’s Congregation for Bishops from 1994-2001 for Cardinal Re. This suggests he is trusted by at least one fraction of the Curia. 

The critical question: if this ticket is floated by Sodano and Re, is there any chance at all that Scherer clean out the Curia? Is this a leader to move the Church (finally) from its fedual, monarachical structure to a vibrant institution capable of offering religious and moral value to members in the 21st century? To separate sacred tradition from institutional interests and power bases? 

Robert Mickens, a journalist for the UK Catholic rag The Tablet, gave a speech (click here to hear it on YouTube) on the coming implosion of the Curia and the implications for the Church. He is part of a growing body of criticism of the medieval structure, expressed today as clericalism, that lies at the root of problems presenting themselves as child abuse, bank scandals, etc. 

The problem with clericalism is that, like a tumor, it is difficult to excise without destorying its neighbors. There are many priests and religious, bishops and Cardinals, that work hard to serve the people of God. That does not change clericalism’s cancerous effects, and nowhere is this seen clearer than in the viscious, destructive and just plain evil machinations of the Curia. 

This is currently expressed in the undeclared war between Cardinals Angelo Sodano and Tarcisio Bertone