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Today's Meditation:

January 6, Bl. Andre Bessette

Brother André spent most of his days in a narrow lodge, with only a table, some chairs and a bench as furnishings. He was attentive to the needs of all, smiling, obliging. In the evening he would engage in the difficult work of maintaining the parlor and hallway floors. He was on his knees until late at night, washing, polishing, and waxing by the dim light of a candle.

The use of candles is one of the loveliest Christmas customs that we can keep on using throughout the year. Now, more than ever, Christmas is a festival of light in a dark world, a time to hold our candles high, and to teach our children all the little ceremonies which make life gracious and full of meaning. No matter how long we live, nor how learned we become, we may travel the world over, and find nothing more beautiful than candlelight on the face of a child. "Now the Lord be thanked because we have light." — Dorothy Albaugh Stickell

Because of the way Christmas falls during the week, there are more than 12 Days of Christmas!  The season ends on Sunday with the Epiphany or Three Kings.


Stay with us!

I was going to mention that President-Elect Obama had tapped Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine to head up the DNC anyway, but then Dan Gilgoff brought it up for completely different reasons.

I agree that Kaine's selection as DNC chair means that the "Faith in Action" program will probably get beefed up. Obama's been quite open about the debt he owes Howard Dean, so it's logical to assume that he chose Kaine to extend Dean's work. Part of that is the various outreach programs, and there's no reason to expect that religious outreach would be any exception.

The other Dan doesn't mention a couple of things, however. First of all, Kaine sucks. Second, he sucks. He stunk up the joint in his response to President Bush's State of the Union Address. He sold out his own base so much that one of the most successful netroots efforts - named specifically for his election - changed their handle because they no longer wanted anything to do with him.

Oh, and did I mention that Kaine sucks?

Yesterday a close friend told me (through tears) that Governor Tim Kaine, as a cost-cutting measure, is closing the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents. 200 jobs - nurses, doctors, social workers and staff - will be eliminated.

The CCCA was one of the only in-patient psychiatric hospitals in Virginia. It served practically the entire state. It was a way-station for these kids. They'd stay there for a while, receive a diagnosis and treatment plan, and move on to the next stage - either back home with their family or to a facility or home equipped to take care of them.

Nobody really knows what is going to happen to them now. The staff is scrambling to find a place for existing patients. Of course, they are also probably scrambling to find a job for themselves.

The CCCA affiliated with the University of Virginia's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program. To be certified as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, a rotation through an in-patient setting is required. The country - especially with its sky-rocketing rates of autism - is suffering through a huge shortage of C&A Psychiatrists. Without this hospital, UVa may have to end its C&A Fellowship Program. The fellows-in-training stand to be left adrift.

Governor Kaine, I'm convinced, chose to close this hospital because kids don't vote. Republicans will stand in the way of any tax increases, so there will simply not be any opportunity to close the budget gap the sane way.

That's some mighty fine Christianity in action there.

Word to the wise: proclaiming yourself to be a Christian early and often might help you get elected. But if your idea of governance is to screw the least of these because you're too chicken to take on corporations, you're still an asshole. And that truth will out, sooner or later.

Happy Monday, everyone.  Happy Monday indeed.

Today's Meditation: thanks to catholicculture.org

The Twelfth Day of Christmas:
January 5, St. John Neumann

John Neumann was born in Bohemia on March 20, 1811. Since he had a great desire to dedicate himself to the American missions, he came to the United States as a cleric and was ordained in New York in 1836 by Bishop Dubois.

In 1840, John Neumann entered the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists). He labored in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland. In 1852, he was consecrated bishop of Philadelphia. There he worked hard for the establishment of parish schools and for the erection of many parishes for the numerous immigrants. Bishop Neumann died on January 5, 1860; he was beatified in 1963.

Tonight is Christmas Eve for many, and in Russia and Ukraine tomorrow will be Christmas Eve.


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Jeremiah 31:7-14

We are presented in this passage with an almost shameful materialism. The Lord has apparently decided to "shoot the moon" with the exiles returning to Israel from Babylon. You shall have enough and more than enough, God tells them. I am going to lavish you with every form of good I can put my mitts on.

It's embarrassing, really. The people of Israel are going to sing, they're going to shout. They're going to give praise, they're going to weep, and dance, and make merry, and be joyful and comforted and glad. God will bring them in, the blind, the lame, parents, pregnant women, old and young, men and women. God will give them a double share on their inheritance, treat them like a shepherd treats a flock, pay their ransom, free them, console them like a parent. He will provide them with grain and wine and oil and water; their priests will have their fill of fatness and God's people "will be satisfied with his bounty."

It is, in short, too much.

Well, all except that bit about the priests. I like that.

I have a confession to make.

I really like a lot of what goes on at Open Left .  But they are extremely anti-Israel (and that's not a can of worms I'm going to open in THIS piece), and they are extremely anti-Southern.

Being both Jewish and Southern, I struggle with that.  My problem isn't what they think.  My problem is how they say it.  Every time I'm infuriated by something at Open Left, it's not because I disagree with it (although I usually do; things I agree with tend not to make me angry); it's because it has been expressed in a way that leaves me thinking that the author can't even see that someone might be intellectually honest, well-considered in their viewpoint, and disagree.  In other words, dissent isn't just incorrect, it's wrong.  There are other prominent holders of that philosophy, and I'm sure you can think of them on your own.

In his recent piece, Northern Racism - Yes, I Know It Exists , Paul Rosenberg argues that the existence of Northern racism is not an excuse for Southern racism, and that neo-Confederate apologia for secession are "grasp[ing] at any straw to avoid what they most detest.  And the sad thing is, their antics have come to define our political discourse, so that many more people, even genuine progressives, have come to reflexively echo some of their most ludicrous knee-jerk responses, making excuses for lack of progress when they should be expressing outrage."

On the jump, I explore (but do not claim to make a definitive statement on) the idea that the Civil War (as a war, not as a conflict that could escalate to war) was caused not by slavery, not by federalism or any of the "neo-Confederate" bullshit that Rosenberg calls apologia, but by a simple problem - the weakness of the rule of law.

Franken up 225 with recount complete; focus turns to court  

Why Baptist Families are Fracturing  

The Fundamentalists thought resubjugating their women would save their families, but all they did was to accelerate the fracturing of families and divide their denomination....  Fundamentalists don’t deny that love is the basis for marriage. They just define love in the terms of pagan Roman culture rather than in the terms of biblical Christianity. For Fundamentalist’s, love is a struggle for power and marriage is a relationship between a master and a slave.

God Hates Shrimp

From the Ministry Institute at Mater Dei ( Full post )

As I've blogged here in years past, we always got the day after Halloween off. As young kids, we thought it might be to recover from the fun of the night before and have a day to barter candy from siblings. We thought this even though the nuns told us again and again the reason we had it off was because it was a feast day (and the mandatory Mass was a reminder it wasn't just a fun, fun day.) ( Full post )

Father Dan's Jubilee homily contained some great Jesuit history. And now the big challenge facing the Jesuits is lower numbers than the society once had. Interesting side note: California politico Jerry Brown was a year ahead of Father in the Society. He left in his fourth year. ( Full post )

From Britain's newspaper The Telegraph: ( Full post )

Blog reader Kipling L. McVay was in search of information about Mary Magdalene and her condemnation by Pope Gregory. (See post below.) ( Full post )

When Jesuit Dan Kendall was a novitiate in 1957 in California, the young men worked the seminary's vineyards. ( Full post )

The last Catholicism for a New Millennium lecture for the Fall will be this Thursday, November 29, at 7:30 at the Gonzaga Law School. John Perry SJ, from the University of Manitoba speaking on “Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security” ( Full post )

Monk and mystic Thomas Merton wrote these words in his 1949 book Seeds of Contemplation. See any parallels to today's world? ( Full post )

Took a long weekend to fly to San Francisco to celebrate Jesuit Dan Kendall's 50th year as a Jesuit. ( Full post )

Beliefnet has a cute cover story today reviewing 10 religious Halloween candies, representing a variety of faith traditions. (These are actual candies, mostly available through religious Web sites.) ( Full post )

I'm shuttering Journey to Vatican III today. It was a bit of a tough decision for me, because the blog has been a way to research Catholic issues and I've "met" Catholics from around the world who e-mailed me after reading blog items. ( Full post )

(This post is being simulblogged at Matter of Opinion. Go there if you do know some of the pioneers mentioned below. Almost all of them are well-known to people in regional Catholic Land.) ( Full post )

John Allen's weekly column in National Catholic Reporter had an interesting analysis of the pope's relationship with Latin American bishops. Liberation theology is always a sticking point. ( Full post )