September 2009

New York Magazine this week has a long article on Archbishop Dolan. He goes out of his way to be truly nice, friendly, personable, charming, a backslapping, gregarious people’s priest, which by all accounts he is. Happy with himself; happy with his priesthood and happy with his Church and church policies. He says that Christianity unfortunately has come to mean in people’s mind a big No to everything. He likes fun, food — chicken dumplings, he likes a beer or a whisky, he likes a cigar. He enjoys the good things of life. That negative view, he says, is a wrong perception because Christianity is a big Yes to life and a big yes “not to what we want” but to “what is right!” Half of the article is about gay sex and gay marriage, which the Archbishop opposes naturally and had legislation quashed in Albany recently but pretty soon is going to be introduced again and again and which the Archbishop will continue to fight tooth and nail. Welcome to New York Archbishop!! There is a job I don’t envy!

– In April, 1903, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt embarked on a 66-day working vacation, a nation-traversing trip that would include stops at Yosemite, (Calif.), Yellowstone (Wyo., Mont., Idaho) and the Grand Canyon. It would be the longest, most elaborate cross-country trek ever undertaken by a sitting president, and by the time it ended, Roosevelt resolved to establish the world’s most extensive and sweeping collection of federally protected wilderness areas. The journey is being recreated by Ken Burns and the resulting film, 12-hour, six-night epic documentary, The National Park’s: America’s Best Idea, begins tonight Sept. 27 on PBS. It will air nightly until Friday, Oct. 2. And by the time it’s over, Burns hopes he will have encouraged more city dwellers and rural residents alike to visit their national parks — not just in the U.S. but elsewhere, too — and to revisit that part of us that resides in nature. I have never had a passion for museums– staring at paintings and artifacts on a wall. But I admire America’s desire to preserve and conserve its history, its memories, its past for posterity in fantastic and numerous museums. Well I come from a country which is basically an entire museum. Cities like Venice, Florence, Rome, what can you say?! Now in Rome they want to expand the subway and it will involve a lot of excavations through ancient Roman ruins, but they have no choice but to do it and I think the entire subway will become a museum. Preserving our history/civilization is a good thing. But I am more touched by preserving the handiwork of God, the natural beauty that surrounds us. I really have a soft spot for natural wonders. Parks, Grand Canyons, desert, forests, mountain peaks, and pristine lakes. They are more immediate. They fascinate and hold me under their spell.

– I have watched from a distance the life and struggle with God by Karen Armstrong, the famous English writer. She was a nun who left the convent in the sixties because she lost her faith. I’ve read most of her books. Read “Through the narrow gate” and it will explain the journey of her soul away from God. She felt then that religion was obsolete, on its way out, extinguished by the advent of the enlightened bright liberated secular age. She lost her compass for some ten or fifteen years. She abandoned Christianity. That always stuck in my gullet; I know people who left the priesthood or convent without abandoning their Catholic faith. Because of her anti-Christian position she was asked to work on TV. Then began the books, several of them. The History of God made her famous worldwide. I read an article she wrote last week on the Wall Street Journal making the case for God and discovered that she has written now a book on the same subject, her latest. While in the same paper Dawkins, the famous atheist made the case against God. Karen like me (she is a year older) is a child of the sixties, the rebellious secular liberal age that shrugged off church, family, country, morality for euphoric freedom at the edge. God and Religion were deemed outmoded, unnecessary, superfluous, pernicious, deleterious, destined for the dustbin of history. Unfortunately to her tremendous surprise faith is still with us and God has not disappeared at all. The happiness/peace of mind that she thought she could find in science and human-kindness did not materialize. Could it be that she finally is back in the fold? Could it be that the house that looked so oppressive and backward all those many years ago is far more attractive, like in the parable of the Prodigal Son, than the rich fodder of the secular society? Which turns out to be just garbage for someone who cares about his/her soul and has eternal hungers/longings within?

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