Raging atheist here, recovering Catholic, lapsed Catholic, collapsed Catholic, Imagine No Religion, the whole deal. Every time Pope Palpatine and his minions make a new pronouncement about Teh Ghey being the biggest threat to humanity since ebola and Hitler combined, I think my jaw can't drop any farther through the floor, then Papa Ratzi flaps his yap one more time and I resign myself to losing my lower mandible until the Deepwater Horizon relief well hits it sometime this coming August, we hope.
For some reason, though, I can't shake the hold some of this stuff has on me. Way back when, I went to the 10:00 Smells 'n' Bells mass (at Sacred Heart Basilica on the campus of Notre Dame) every damn Sunday, always sat in the same spot next to the second column from the sanctuary on the right, next to Emil Hofman, and soaked up the incense and stained glass and the incomparable sensation of being surrounded by the biggest fucking pipe organ on the planet and 1,200 voices raised in song, led by the forebears of these kids.
So yeah. Today I racked up all the YouTube videos of the Lit Choir I could find, and spent the day writing archaeology against the background of the voices of angels, while from time to time mulling the latest bit of WTF sent along by K. The source of solace is simultaneously the source of so much pain. Well, I guess that's Catholicism in a nutshell for you: on the one hand being so enraged and bitter that this had me delightedly snorking coffee out my nose, and on the other hand having a part of my heart so deeply tied to place and past that this brought tears to my eyes.
The Friday in Sports, more like it, although it's effectively ended the Weekend in Sports not 20 minutes after it began. Uh, chickie pea in the pink shorts on co-ed team Should B? Yeah, you, the one who hacked me and trashed my ankle when you were already up 11-9 in players and 4-1 in goals? 20 minutes in? Yeah, fuck you. Instead of beers with my teammates I got a hot date with a cold bag of frozen peas. Fuck off with your hacky ways. I'm too old for this.
The upside is getting a jump on watching the women's College Cup on the DVR. Stanford beats UCLA on two Oh My Goodness goals resulting from rapid-fire collect-control-turn-SHOOT shots that left the Bruin keeper helpless and flat-footed. ND-UNC is up next; go Irish.
What else... ND declined a bowl bid, thank Touchdown Jeebus. In Additional Upside News, the upside to the crap season is lots of ND gear being offered at deep discounts, so I got matching Zbikowski jerseys (or Tony Rice, or Kyle Rudolph) for myself and my brother for Christmas.
And Kevin made the finals of Top Chef. Life is good, except for this ankle.
The Cubs have suspended Milton Bradley for the rest of the season and may be looking to unload him. At this point, just eating the two years remaining on his contract would be worth it if it gets him out of Chicago. They dumped Mark DeRosa to pick up this guy, and then had the temerity to act baffled when he refused to play nicely with his teammates, the fans at Wrigley, and greater Chicagoland. Bradley's been clubhouse poison basically forever. How this knowledge escaped Jim Hendry until it was too late is a mystery to me.
In football news, the Irish escaped a fiftieth or something consecutive home loss to Michigan State on the whisker of two dropped balls by the Spartans and Kyle McCarthy hanging on to an interception at the Notre Dame 10. And top receiver Michael Floyd is lost for the year to a broken collarbone. Maybe this was the wrong year to keep Goliath-slaying Washington on the schedule?
Finally, the Washington Freedom's Jo Lohman and Becca Moros are spending part of the WPS off-season playing in Japan. They're blogging about it, and they're adorable.
When even the Holocaust-denier-appeasing Prada pope tacitly smacks you down, you know you've taken things a wee tad too far.
The Vatican said Monday that President Barack Obama was clearly looking for some common ground with his speech at the University of Notre Dame about abortion.
Granted, Ratzi didn't directly say anything about the caterwauling US bishops who have been gnashing their teeth and rending their garments at the horror that is Someone Not Completely In Line With Catholic Social Teaching As Long As The Not Completely Part Refers To Abortion That Is speaking at a Catholic university, but neither did he hop onto their bloody doll-strewn bandwagon. The silence, if you will, is deafening and delicious. No word on whether His Holiness followed up with "Go Irish."
This week, Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando, Fla., will take the unusual step of celebrating a Mass of Reparation, to make amends for sins against God.
The motivation: to provide an outlet for Catholics upset with what Wenski calls the University of Notre Dame's "clueless" decision to invite President Obama to speak at its commencement and receive an honorary doctorate May 17.
Gotta hand it to Notre Dame--love the place or loathe the place, it usually manages to bring out passions on both sides. As the university reels toward graduation with giant abortion posters sailing overhead and bloodied dolls in strollers being trundled around South Quad by Randall Terry, lesser-light bishops are coming out of the woodwork across the country to get their 15 minutes in before the diplomas get handed out. John D'Arcy of Ft. Wayne-South Bend-via-Boston said his piece a couple of months ago, and about 55 others have chimed in since then to ensure their place in the storied history this little kerfuffle has blossomed into, riling up the faithful and deeply annoying undergraduates who would really like to be able to study for finals in peace, thanks.
The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform keeps it klassy.
Randall Terry keeps it klassier.
My simple question remains the same. Where were all of you strident defenders of Catholic social teaching when George W. Bush spoke at the 2001 commencement and got his honorary degree? Granted, this was a couple of years before he violated the doctrine condemning unjust war, but why did we not see the Knights of Columbus marching down Juniper Road carrying posters of Karla Faye Tucker and denouncing Bush as a murderer, inspired to a holy rage by the Church's teaching against the death penalty?
The simple answer, of course, is that abortion is the ultimate litmus test, the issue that establishes righteous indignation hellfire cred like no other, the trump card that renders the million shades of gray on your moral resume to stark black and white. As a gay woman who has had her identity helpfully reduced to a single sex act to be summarily denounced by perfect strangers, I guess I should sympathize with the university to some degree. Oh Notre Dame, you really are about so much more than whether a ten-week blob of cells should be removable or should be accorded a status greater than the woman in which it resides, but people don't want to let you be complex. They'd rather use you as a flashpoint to denounce, to pontificate, to assert their own righteousness and ratchet up their own personal power over others a couple of notches. Half the students think Obama's going to roast in hell. Half are thrilled to have him speaking at commencement. All of them are probably ready for some peace and quiet.
Thomas Wenski, please go to a bar with your fellow bandwagon-jumping bishops and shut the fuck up. Clean up your own houses and demand transparency in sexual abuse investigations, work for justice for the poor, demand justice on behalf of those who have been tortured in your name, and just shut. the. fuck. up.
Now that John D'Arcy has weighed in on Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama to give the commencement address, old home week is complete here in Boltland. First, the bishop's statement explaining what has his ecclesiastical shorts in a knot when he contemplates Obama striding beneath the shadow of the Golden Dome:
While claiming to separate politics from science, he has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life.
For the first time! In history! D'Arcy seems to have forgotten about prior little government-sponsored dustups like the Sioux extermination program and, oh, maybe Hiroshima--lord knows I can barely remember those myself given my busy schedule these days--as well as about the fact that Notre Dame has previously hosted both Condi Rice and W himself. Maybe casual capital punishment and wanton warmongering don't count as life-extermination any more?
My personal brushes with D'Arcy came shortly after he landed in South Bend as the new bishop in the spring of 1985, imported from Boston to replace an oldster whose name completely escapes me at the moment and likely to ensure the primacy of some old-school conservatism in the diocese. One of his first churchly duties there was to preside over my confirmation ceremony, where he proceeded to warn us that our friends are really evil, awful people who will persuade us to do bad things, so we should ignore them and remember that our trust should really belong to the church. 25 years later I still have the friends but have quite happily shed the church. And D'Arcy's still in South Bend spouting twisted half-truths to whatever audience he has left.
Will Notre Dame extend the customary five-year courtesy to Charlie Weis, show him the door a la Ty Willingham, or perchance will Fr. Jenkins trundle over and discreetly slip the big guy his pink slip before he makes it to the locker room in the Coliseum tonight?
They are beyond bad. They are uninspired, uninspiring, dull dull dull. But this is Notre Dame, and they already took a huge image gamble when they pulled the trigger on Willingham after only three years, got hoodwinked by George O'Leary, and then--once they thought they had a high-demand winner in Weis--locked up the new guy with an unheard of eight-year extension two years into his contract. Now they're looking at a $4.5M buyout and the unsavory prospect of (1) acting like every other football factory in the country, except for the part about perennially having a winning record, and (2) finding somebody who has a high profile and still wants to step into this mess and coach.
As I type this, it's the end of the third quarter and ND just made their first 1st down of the evening. They'd been outrushed in the first half a lot to -6. Negative. Six.
At least the basketball teams are representing, complete with Luke Harangody's throwback Kelly Tripucka haircut. Of course, now the big guy's come down with pneumonia (after a week in Maui? I am confused), so it might be a rough few weeks.
Wow. Haven't seen an offense that inept since the waning days of the Willingham era.
South Bend Tribune photo/Jim Rider
Michigan getting amazingly slapped down by Appalachian State was the day's only saving grace; at least we lost to a Division I team. Suck it, Wolverines! Go Irish go!
Midnight Drummer's Circle was better back in the day before they added so much stupid oooOOH-ooOOH chanting, but it still kicks off an ND home game weekend like nuthin' else.
Harry Oliver beat Michigan on a last-second, 51-yard field goal on September 20, 1980. I was at at that game, sitting three rows from the top at Notre Dame Stadium right on the goal line. Oliver lined up for the kick, the 15-mph headwind fell still, and he hit the ball. The stadium fell silent as the ball toppled end over end, end over end, surely falling short... and clearing the crossbar by maybe three inches. And the stadium exploded.
"It's probably what's going to go on my tombstone instead of when I was born or when I died," he said during the 2004 interview. "It's going to be, 'September 20, 1980. Notre Dame 29, Michigan 27.'"
Harry Oliver died yesterday of cancer at the age of 47. Godspeed.
I wonder how much matters to anyone, ultimately, until it becomes personal. I like to think my compassion is boundless, not situational, and then reality comes and smacks me upside the head.
The SoulForce Equality Riders are a group of young 'uns (remember, I'm old) who have been visiting religious colleges and universities across the country, attempting to deliver messages of inclusiveness and justice, urging these institutions to adopt gay-friendly policies for their students and staff, getting thrown off campuses and arrested left and right. Huh, I thought, sucks for them, but that reception probably wasn't completely unexpected. And they must at least have gotten the satisfaction of standing up for the right thing.
Then Soulforce hit Notre Dame.
Some of the Equality Riders, accompanied by a couple of gay Notre Dame students, were charged with trespassing when they laid a wreath at the Tom Dooley statue at the Grotto, the lovely shrine that replicates the Grotto at Lourdes in France, a quiet refuge of rock, moss, and trees that's the first visit for many people when they make their pilgrimages back to campus.
If you don't know Notre Dame (or if you're under 50), you may not know the name, or you may know it only from the ancient Kingston Trio song. Dooley, a Notre Dame grad, was a Navy doctor in World War II and went on to work in southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, rescuing 600,000 Catholic Vietnamese and relocating them to South Vietnam. God, Country, Notre Dame. Dooley epitomized the Notre Dame spirit of service to humanity and, above all, love of the university, a love immortalized by a bronze plaque at the Grotto bearing an excerpt of a letter he wrote in December 1960, as he was dying of cancer in Hong Hong, to University President Fr. Ted Hesburgh:
But just now . . . and just so many times, how I long for the Grotto. Away from the Grotto Dooley just prays. But at the Grotto, especially now when there must be snow everywhere and the lake is ice glass and that triangular fountain on the left is frozen solid and all the priests are bundled in their too-large too-long old black coats and the students wear snow boots . . . if I could go to the Grotto now then I think I could sing inside. I could be full of faith and poetry and loveliness and know more beauty, tenderness and compassion.
The only thing that could possibly tarnish the image of the revered Dooley, the sainted Dooley, in the University's eyes, is the fact that he was most likely a gay man. That's why they SoulForce guys wanted to put their wreath at his feet. And for bringing up that uncomfortable truth about a Catholic university's poster boy hero, the riders were charged with criminal trespassing and the students were threatened with suspension.
I knew before, of course, that ND is a pretty conservative place. Hell, half the students are enrolled in the College of Business Administration, most come from affluent families, and it's Catholic. But I still managed to think the best, to focus on the social justice preached from the pulpit most Sundays when I went to Mass at the Basilica, to remember the spirit of the Notre Dame family that buoyed me through countless days of adolescent angst.
No, I didn't go there. I got in and was named a Notre Dame Scholar, thankyouverymuch, but received a better scholarship from Northwestern and so went there instead. But my heart never left Notre Dame. I had gone to high school across the street from campus and lived just a few blocks away, attending Mass there and even biking over for vespers every evening in the summertime. I spent hours at the Grotto near Dooley's statue, sometimes praying, sometimes meditating, sometimes just sitting and soaking in the history and vibes of the place. Even after my mom left South Bend and I moved to Chicago, it was the home I always came back to. It was a constant, and my place there was secure.
I sit here and type this with the aid of a mouse scooting across a Notre Dame mouse pad. I have ND shirts for every day of the week. My office is divided from the larger lab room, in part, by a Notre Dame flag. A hockey jersey autographed by the captain of the '81 -'82 team hangs on my wall. There may be a link in the sidebar on the right to the DomeCam. On October 21 of this year, when Brady Quinn's 45-yard toss settled into Jeff Szmardzija's hands to cap an improbable comeback against UCLA, I damn near hit my head on the ceiling, and when the players stood arm-in-arm in front of the student section after the game, singing "Notre Dame, Our Mother," the tears in my eyes came from that particular swelling of the heart and soul only the Golden Dome can inspire.
Yeah, if you understand, no explanation is necessary; if you don't, well, it probably all seems more than a little psychotic.
When I came out, I worried about rejection from several different quarters. I didn't think to worry about Notre Dame. So when I read about the SoulForce kids being arrested, the students suspended, and the fact that AllianceND (the campus GLBT group) is not only not officially recognized by the university, but also barred from meeting on campus, it felt like a personal kick in the teeth. Yes, yes, I know ND's conservative, but... this is me. It was minus an order of magnitude, perhaps, but still very similar to the feeling when my coming out to my dad didn't go as well as I'd expected. Yes, I know he's conservative, but, but, but... this is me.
Dad's still in the process of coming around, seven years later, but at least it's in progress. What's the dad:university ratio? How many years does that mean it will be before the university so many of us love and consider a spiritual home decides to come around and accept all of its children unconditionally?
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley, Hang down your head and cry.
Valentine's Day. Nice enough. An e-mail from my undergrad adviser had me surfing the nostalgia wave for a while this afternoon; I got on The Google to see what he looks like these days (same face, but the short mop of brown hair is now white and threatening his waist). While I was on the topic, I figured I might as well check in on another undergrad professor (no apparent change), which then naturally led to a quick look at the surviving English teacher from high school. I couldn't quite picture the building listed as his office address at Holy Cross College, necessitating a few seconds of tapping away at Google Earth, since, hey, Holy Cross is right there by the high school, in the old neighborhood, in the town I used to call home, so a click and a drag and away we went.
Google Earth. Seriously, how can you not be thoroughly boggled at the ability to zoom in and take a bird's eye tour of your old high school campus, getting close enough to see people on the sidewalk and hurdles tipped haphazardly at the side of the track? The football field has been relocated to the west of the school now, where there used to be a small woods. The old field has been obliterated, the footprint of the ancient cinder track reduced to the ghost of an oval ring in the grass to the north of the school. The rest of the woods are still there, still separating the campus from the field where intramurals used to be played and the marching band practiced on more frigid mornings than I care to remember.
The new track, where Tom died, skirts on its west end the edge of the ridge that plunges down to the floodplain of the St. Joe river. Click and drag the image to follow the street west a quarter of a mile down that hill, at the bottom of the curve, and there's my old house, a strange car in the driveway. Click and drag again and there's Tom and Rita's old house, down the block from mine, the trees that dropped leaves I used to rake for him full and green.
I wondered if I still remembered the way I used to walk from home over to Notre Dame, not the grand front entrance route but the back way following the railroad tracks and service drives, the solitary route leading to the quiet refuge of the lakes and the Grotto. Click and drag, click and drag, flying above streets whose names I don't remember but can see in my head, picking my way now from home past the beloved campus and the now-gone soccer fields of my youth, through the four-way stop that confounded me as a novice driver, past the ice cream place and out to the mall. The landmarks of adolescence. It was quietly comforting not to get lost.
God, Holy Week used to be such the huge deal to me. Back when I was much younger and not yet perceptive enough to recognize the rather large disconnects with reality that ultimately drove me from the Catholic church, that is. I lived just a couple of miles from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the big beautiful church on the campus of Notre Dame. I always went to the 10:30 mass ("Smells 'n' Bells" in campus parlance) that hearkened back to the High Mass of the pre-Vatican II church, with the full choir and twenty priests concelebrating.
I didn't think as much about the Church then as I did about the simplicity of that Chuy guy's message. It all made sense then--love everyone and treat others as you would want to be treated and give your resources to help those less fortunate than yourself. As a teenager, kneeling under the Gothic Revival arches and vaults in the air thick and heady with incense, surrounded by the other members of the Notre Dame family, I was certain I could feel that universal love and interconnectedness reverberating through me as surely as I felt the bass notes from the massive pipe organ and the vibrations of a thousand sets of vocal cords raised in song.
Then I grew up and moved out into a world where, I eventually learned, that simple exhortation to love and serve was just a hippie smokescreen cherry-picked to obscure the real message of Christianity, which is to follow the anal nit-picking of a humorless, self-hating git named Paul, to use the Bible as a cudgel to smack down everyone who doesn't follow the same dour proscriptions against human nature Paul did, to "love" people different from yourself by condemning them and claim that those who perceive your actions as hatred are bigots who hate Christians. That's what I'm picking up from Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Michael Marcavage, and their ilk, anyway. I can't help but think, were he to come back for a visit, Jesus would yank the planks from their eyes and then knock them upside the head with them.
The last Good Friday I spent at Sacred Heart was in 1985, my senior year in high school. The mail had come just before I needed to leave the house for church, and there was the big fat envelope from Notre Dame I'd been hoping for, the letter that told me I was admitted and designated a Notre Dame Scholar due to good grades and letters of recommendation. It was hard to get through the service with the appropriate solemnity, given the very good news indeed I'd just received. The next week I got another fat letter from Northwestern with a much bigger scholarship offer, making the decision moot and setting me off on my journey to Chicago and, eventually, Arizona. I often wonder how my life might have unfolded if I'd aggressively gone after some grants and ended up at Notre Dame after all. I wonder if I'd be sitting inside the Basilica today, still believing.
