Catholic circles I frequent are buzzing with the rumor that Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. of Pennsylvania…an Irish Catholic pro-lifer who came out for Obama the other day…could be Obama’s secret weapon to get the nomination from some recalcitrant super-delegates. Reason: Obama’s strident views on abortion and gay rights have worried some of the super-delegates that while much of the party and almost all the national news media adore the long, lanky, witty, suave Obama, the same cast of players adored George McGovern in 1972 forgetting that the country is less liberal than they. You have this twerp Brian Williams of NBC wondering how anyone could cover Obama and be objective because he is so convincing…and the overgrown kid on “Hardball,” Chris Matthews who told his MSNBC audience when he hears Obama speak he feels a quiver run down his leg (an unmanly confession that could be linked to latent something or other).
But there are other super-delegates, with some blue-collar constituencies who remember 1972 and don’t relish the idea of going down the toilet with the superstar who comes close to prompting Matthews’ la passionata near climax. Those people would be enamored, it is said, with Casey. Casey’s pro-life stance could soften Obama’s pro-abortion stance and cause him to use the tool he employs best…bring-us-together ambiguity. Also what would the Catholic bishops do, then? Deny Casey the sacrament? Not hardly.
The downside is that the Democratic ticket would be composed of two freshmen senators and would exaggerate the inexperience issue. But my sources say that when you contrast this to the power that an Irish Catholic adds to the ticket, the inexperience issue fizzles. On one thing they’re right. Democrats have been slow to get the message on the Catholic vote. They think of everything except the pro-life angle. They nominated an Italian woman congressman from New York, Geraldine Ferraro but got nothing out of it but grief since she was a pro-abort and tangled with John Cardinal O’Connor, diminishing her political prospects. All the other Catholics mentioned or running are pro-abort and hence regarded by the Church…all except Theodore Cardinal McCarrick…as semi-apostates. Not McCarrick who feels a shiver running down HIS leg when he talks to Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd, Dick Durbin, Richard Daley et al. He should get the Archbishop Cranmer award for political dexterity.
All right, no search engines now. This is a trivia question: Who was Archbishop Thomas Cranmer? Give me as many details about him as possible…and you’re on your honor not to cheat.
The Fired Highly Paid TV News Readers.
Isn’t it time for Diane Burns to call the Sultan of Pout, the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson and charge that she was fired because she is black? Felicia Middlebrooks did at WBBM. Big Jess pulled a demonstration and the little lady has been back there ever since.
On TV, life is tough, especially when you got $3 million a year for doing an elementary job of reading without mispronouncing (which Diane has done well) but her charismatic presence did nothing to revive the eternally dead not-to-be-resurrected Channel 2. The Sultan wouldn’t lift a finger for Maryann Childers because she’s white.
But then nobody can raise that Channel 2 Lazarus from the tomb. Anyhow, why shouldn’t they have fired the station manager Joe Ahern who hired her in the first place? Diane was a winner at Channel 7. She goes to 2 and sinks like a stone. Do you suppose it might have something to do with Ahern? Of all of them I like Childers best. She seems to know what she’s reading.
Allow me to be the first as I just can't pass up a trivia question... Thomas Cranmer was the Archbishop of Canterbury who, in defiance of the pope, gave Henry VIII a divorce/annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1533, clearing the way for Henry to marry Anne Boleyn.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I believe Cranmer later on got roasted by Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.
ReplyDeleteThomas Cranmer was Henry VIII's Archbishop of Canterbury who approved henry's divroce from Catherine of Aragon, and married Henry to Anne Boleyn.
ReplyDeleteIIRC, Cranmer was educated at Oxford. He was drwn to the Lutheran reformation, and for a time lived in Germany and married the daughter of the Lutheran bishop of Nuremburg. (Later in his career Cranmer tended toward Calvinism.) He returned to England, and was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury to succeed Cardinal Wolsey.
Over time, Cranmer nudged Henry's schism toward Protestantism, and after Henry's death, introduced the vernacular into the liturgy. He laid the foundations for the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and is credited with many of the fine translations of the ancient Latin prayers used in that august tome, as well as many of the original compositions, many of which are still in use today. (And, even after having their English modernized, are superior by may orders of magnitude to the "translations" of many of those same prayers made by the ICEL* for English speaking Catholics in the 1960s and 1970s.)
On the accession of good Queen Mary, Cranmer was implicated in the plot to install Lady Jane Grey as Queen. Rather than charge Cranmer with treason, Mary charged him with heresy (a public relations blunder that her half sister Elizabeth would never have made), and he was burned at Oxford. Cranmer is revered by some Anglicans as a martyr.
My account is probably much biased, but I learned about Cranmer largely from Catholic traditionalist sources. I'm sure his spiritual heirs would be a bit more generous.
*ICEL = International Commission on English in the Liturgy, responsible for the tin-eared translation used in modern Catholic worship.
He was the Archbishop of Canterburry when Henry VIII broke with Rome over his inability to have the Marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled. Thomas was very much entralled with Luther and Philip Melancten. And it was Thomas Cranmer who changed the ordination rite to accomplish what Luther accomplished rather than what was intended by the Church of Rome. This is why Anglicans do NOT have valid orders.
ReplyDeleteTom-
ReplyDeleteAccording to today's comments, your readers value historical triva over modern politics.
Logical. (as Lt Commander Spock used to say on Star Trek).