Feast of Saint John Gualbert.*
As many of you know, this blog was stuck on July 6 for a full week because its proprietor was in the hospital undergoing tests. As I had reported before, every few months I’ve gotten a fever and fatigue with no discernible cause. Each bout lasts about a week. In the medical field they call things like this a “fevers of unknown origin”—but the darned thing has begun to interfere with my schedule so I went to Rush University hospital for a few days to be their guinea pig. There’s good news and bad news about it. The good: There’s a whole litany of diseases I could have but which tests show I don’t. The bad: there still is no definite conclusion on what has caused these happenings for the past two years. But the search isn’t through yet. I’ll keep you informed.
LeBron Treated Like a Runaway Slave, says Rev. Jesse.
A major reason why the Rev. Jesse Jackson has become a living cartoon of pomposity shows with his ridiculous statement yesterday drawing a parallel between the free agency and slavery.
This is the same Hustler Jesse, slated to be fired by King, who smeared his shirt with King’s blood and hightailed it out of Memphis for a date on the Today Show where he displayed his shirt to the nation, linking his own destiny to King’s—a career concentrated on the lovely talents of marching, poetic couplet-invention, professional pouting, self-aggrandizement, running for president, anti-Semitism (calling New York city hymie-town) and bludgeoning a beer company to give his kids a lucrative franchise. I know all about this phoniness having had to “negotiate” with this guy for Quaker Oats 30 years ago.
This is the same hustler who has been notably silent about growing illegitimacy which racks the poor…largely because he has had his own episode with girl friend and their child…the same girl friend who accompanied Saint Jesse to the White House where the Rev sought to bring spiritual comfort to Bill Clinton. Still the media have not had their fill of this fraud. The Sun-Times is paying penance for a series of investigatory attacks years earlier by elevating this demagogue to the status of “columnist” and running his liberal, ghost-written boilerplate each week.
Following LeBron James’ decision to sign with the Miami Heat, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, expressed his displeasure…whereupon Jackson thrust out his ample chest and said “He speaks as an owner of LeBron and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave. This is an owner employee relationship—between business partners—and LeBron honored his contract.” Get this: master-slave relationship where the “slave” gets an estimated $90 million for five years.
But, writes Wayne Hodges in the Topeka Democrat-Examiner (himself black): “Memo to Jackson: Gilbert was indeed the rightful owner of King James. When a player signs a contract, the owner obtains his or her legal rights and can negotiate them as he or she deems fit. That’s why they’re called owners. Whether you like it or not, LeBron is now the exclusive property of Miami Heat owner Micky Arison. Jackson, if you’re that upset at wealthy white businessmen for possessing the contractual rights of clueless black athletes, start a campaign to increase African-American ownership. I’m serious. If you’re going to raise hell, make sure it’s for something productive.
“As of right how, the NBA has one black majority owner. One…Jackson also stated Gilbert views LeBron as a runaway slave and added the owner’s comments placed the free-agent forward in danger. Uh, wrong. LeBron’s puzzling decision to partake in a 60-minute, over-hyped ESPN special to announce his 2-second decision placed him in grave danger. Declaring intentions publicly is one thing. Making a joke out of an entire city is another.”
Hodges is an MBA from St. Mary University, the editor of MassAppealNews.com a candidate for the Kansas state senate, an adjunct professor and MPA at the University of Kansas. We should not expect an answer from Jackson who is at this very minute probably planning another media strategy to get his name back on the front page where…at least in
Chicago…it ranks far too often and undeservedly. The worst thing about the U of I firing of Prof. Ken Howell of Champaign is not the cavalier sense of liberal fascism that the school exhibits over freedom of thought…nor the absence of any moral fervor from the media which would take the firing of a leftist as a dire threat to academic freedom (the empress of political correctness, Carol Marin…the monopolist commentator of Sun-Times, Channel 5 and Channel 11… would be camped out today in Champaign wailing over the throttling of free ideas if he had been fired for advocacy of homosexual rights)…but the abject failure of the Peoria archdiocese to defend the valiant academic for stating correctly that homosexuality is opposed to the church teaching based on divine revelation s and Catholic tradition—which it indisputably is.
I know Ken Howell and as an academic myself have great respect for him as a theologian and well-balanced, articulate defender of the Faith…without in the slightest degree purveying hate—but for stating simply and correctly that it is church teaching that sexual experience is divinely reserved to husband and wife in marital relations. That a student got away with the specious non-argument that “teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing [but] declaring that homosexual acts violate the nature laws of man is another” is ridiculous. Howell taught it as a tenet of Catholicism means it is indissolubly tied to its theologians’ teaching of natural law. One does not merely say it is this Church’s opinion. In order to teach Catholicism one must aver that Revelation and philosophical wisdom are from the one God who does not volunteer this teaching as “an opinion.”
The so-called argument for Howell’s dismissal as I hear it is that it was made by civil authority in response to this kid’s objection and that the Church authority merely had to follow suit. This is flaccidity and weak-willedness at its height, There is no evidence that the diocese reacted to this usurpation of its rights. Presumably the monsignor in charge of the program did…although I have not been shown that he did—but even if he meekly accepted the university’s charge…as I imagine he did…the fact that there has not been a peep from the diocese on this matter illustrates the foppishness of its leadership. Of course one need never expect the media would oppose the firing. Privately the liberal media are cheering: just one fewer voice raised against the civic religion which it shares which espouses same-sex marriage.
Truly there should be a Catholic contributors’ revolution in Peoria which is the only way to gain the attention of the chancery. That and all the attendant pressures that should be brought to bear via the public: a mass of letters, a public demonstration demanding the personal presence of the prelate.
And who is the bishop? He is one Daniel R. Jenky, CSC who was educated at Notre Dame and prior to his service as auxiliary bishop to Bishop John M. D’Arcy of South Bend, had been superior of his religious community’s unit at the University of Notre Dame.
There: that tells you something about the pathetic weakness of ecclesial authority in Peoria, does it not? Jenky exhibits all the intellectual ardor and toughness of the order that runs Notre Dame and which invited Barack Obama…the abortion president…to speak there. Evidently serving as auxiliary to Bishop D’Arcy, who valiantly opposed Obama’s coming to the Golden Dome, didn’t stiffen Jenky’s spine.
There ought to be a consumer protest on this one…and Jenky ought to be forced to explain without parsing why he allowed a fine professor who correctly explained Catholic theology to be fired by a secular university without protest…and moreover why Jenky sat still and allowed the institute on Catholic thought to bow to civil arrogance.
At the very least, if the University could not be dissuaded from firing Howell, Jenky should have pulled the ripcord on the whole project at the U of I Champaign. Allowing it to continue this way under state dominance…with state control over Catholic theology…is an insult and an abomination to the Church—for which Jenky should be held accountable…by those faithful Catholics of his diocese—and ultimately by Rome. Jenky’s gutlessness approaches that of Cranmer and Wolsey of another age.
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*: Saint John Gualbert [995-1073]. The founder and abbot of the Vallombrosian monks and member of a noble Florentine family. Coming face to face with the man who murdered his brother one Good Friday, local custom required that the elder brother kill the murderer in revenge…but when the killer begged pardon, John Gualbert forgave him. Soon afterward he became a monk…but not a priest… at San Miniato, Florence.
Dissatisfaction with clerical laxity at his monastery, Gualbert left in the company of monk friends and set up his own monastery at Vallombrosa, 20 miles east of Florence. There he administered the Benedictine rule. He instituted the concept of lay brothers adopted with notable success by the Cistericians a century later. When he died at age 80 his variant of more austere Benedictine life was spreading across Europe. He was canonized in 1193.
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