Thoughts While Shaving: Evan’s Not Going Bayh-Bayh…The Need for a Catholic “Tea Party”…

Shrove Tuesday: Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus. Also the Feast of St. Juliana Falconieri*
           

                               Evan’s Planning a 2012 White House Run. 

             The tip-off was conveyed in the blunt language  and style in Evan Bayh’s surprise announcement that he’s not running for reelection.  

            The language conveyed disenchantment with Obama liberalism which has moved the Democratic party from its high-water-mark ascendancy just a year ago to the sinking stage today.  Bayh said he is extremely disappointed with the inability of getting anything done in Congress.   

              That’s a severe condemnation of Obama because with 59 Democratic senators (formerly 60) nothing of liberal substance has been done. Moreover, Bayh indicated clearly much earlier that his kind of Democratic party is not the far-left version that the Obama people have fashioned.  Thus it is a distinct rebuke.  When a winner like Bayh says this it means the national Obama leadership has failed. 

               Also the language gave a strong hint that Bayh will be running for president in the future.  It said that Bayh sees himself more as a governor than legislator. Well, he has already been a governor.  The only chance for him to exert executive leadership is to run for president.  Since he’s only 54 he could wait for 2016 when he will be 60.  

               But no politician really signals that kind of interest so far down the road: six full years which constitutes a lifetime in politics.  The logical import of his language is that he may well seek the Democratic nomination against Obama in 2012 when, if things keep going as they are, Obama may well decide to forego a shot at a second term anyhow. 

              Then there is the style of the announcement. 

           Bayh waited until the very last day before signature collection to make the announcement which will utterly negate his party’s ability to find a successor. In order to file, a new candidate will have to collect a minimum of  500 signatures in each of the seven congressional districts and file the total by noon today! The only recourse Indiana Democrats have is to run somebody as a write-in. 

            The style is insolent, brusque and conveys a…pardon the inelegance…salutation of screw you to his party.  Normally this would incur a bitterness among regulars.     But Obama has declared that he’d rather be a one-term president having gotten things done than a two-term one and a failure.  

           Sorry but the choice doesn’t run that way in politics. 

          The likelihood at least right nowis that he will be a one-term failed president with a far more egregious record of failings than Jimmy Carter had.  Carter at least had the Camp David Accords of 1978 which he could point to which after 13 days Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat hammered out the framework for peace between Egypt and Israel.  While Carter’s own incompetence…plans to have the U. S. and USSR jointly run an international commission to mediate the Middle East difficulties… sent Sadat running to Israel to work out the beginnings of the agreement.  And for a good reason: he had expelled the USSR from Egypt and he didn’t want to be punished by the Russians by the joint commission. 

             That being said, at least Carter could point to a breakthrough.   Obama has nothing nor does he have the prospect of gaining even a modest foreign policy achievement. 

              Thus it looks more certain by the day that Obama will not run and that Bayh is positioning himself as the moderate successor.  

              The contemptuous way in which Bayh discourteously declined to run yesterday is meant to show his rebellious, disheartened, disconsolate party that there is an alternative to Obama-ism on the Right.  It argues that the Left will split  every which way to find a successor: including to Hillary Clinton…but no candidate but a centrist can win. Certainly not an ill-fated secretary of state for a thoroughly failed presidency, Hillary…tired and worn as she will be at age 65 and bristling with accumulated negatives.   

              Bayh’s gam ble is an interesting one. It bets Obama is done, through. It bets no one on the Left will be able to muster any support. Which leaves the man who so rudely decided enough is enough with the flailing Obama-run party…until 2012.  

                                    A Catholic Tea Party?   

             Someone, I don’t know whom, has suggested that U. S. Catholics form a Tea Party revolution…not based on liturgy or theology…but on opposition to the arch-left bureaucracy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops which is reactionary in its obeisance to the political Left in fomenting programs that run against the common-sense of people in the pews: such as failing to reform the Campaign for Human Development and its linkage to pro-abortion and pro-gay rights.  

              The watchword, then, would be simple: End the valueless USCCB as it has no more canonical significance than a local Rotary Club. 

              The idea is a good one. The head of the USCCB is our own Cardinal George who has not shown the slightest indication that he favors any change.  And indeed his term will be over shortly.  His anointed successor to be will be the bishop of Tucson, Gerald Kicanas.  Unlike George, Kicanas…once Mundelein rector… doesn’t hide his true intentions under flowery rhetoric. He is a blunt-spoken Lefty who is intransigent in his support of permissiveness of homosexuality in the clergy…having told The Chicago Sun-Times that he would again ordain Dan McCormack…as he had earlier as rector, expressing a worry only that McCormack was drinking too much.  

             That kind of obtuseness is deleterious to the Church and although promoted several times since McCormack, he should not be rewarded with the largely meaningless but still honorific title of president of the USCCB. George is nearing retirement, is congenitally timid and indecisive.  Kicanas is a far different type.  His expected elevation should be a focal point for the rebellion of those authenticists in the pews.  Let the watchword be: 

              If they [the Church hierarchy] mean to have war [by sanctioning the election of Kicanas] let it begin here. 

            The war should not evince disobedience, shouting or disruption or news conferences.

            Just hit `em where it hurts: in the collection plates until our voices are heeded.       

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• Shrove Tuesday, The Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus. Also the Feast of St. Juliana. Three-fers mark this day. Shrove Tuesday is celebrated in English-speaking countries—the U.S.,Canada, Ireland, Catholic areas of England, Australia and New Zealand.  The word Shrove is past-tense of the verb shrive which means to obtain forgiveness and absolution for sin by confessing and doing penance—anticipating the season of Lent which begins on the following day, Ash Wednesday. Here it’s also known as Pancake Day signifying that the making and eating of pancakes was considered a last full consumption of sugar, fat and eggs preparatory to voluntary fasting and abstinence of such foods during the 40 days of Lent.

The Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus was begun in 1958 by Pius XII to be marked on Shrove Tuesday to memorialize the face of the Savior shown on the Shroud of Turin which has survived much skepticism to be viewed now in historical context as a miracle where the sacred face of the Christ is shown on His winding sheet.  Pius urged that representations of the Holy Face be shown.   

       Last, I have chosen the Feast of St. Juliana to be recorded here not just because the Church has designated it as a Feast but since it is the church of my childhood on the Northwest Side of Chicago, the site of my elementary school where two of my grandchildren have also attended (one continuing as student in the same building I used in 1934-42. It is the same building where I screamed blue-murder on the first day when my mother deposited me there…leading me to become  the laughing stock of my 1^st grade fellows who were more calm then I—causing me to hate them all and vow I would get even with them one day.  That aspiration still endures: Indeed I once dated a young lady who said on our first evening when we were alone:“God, my first remembrance of you is how you howled and screamed when your mother left you in our school room. The more Sister tried to console you the more you yelled so that in a few minutes we were all yowling for our mothers!” Somehow the hoped- for magic of the date dispelled with these painful words and she wondered why she was deposited so quickly after the movie and soda at 8 p.m.  

       Juliana Falconiere [1270-1341] was the child of a noble family of Florence who became founder of the Sisters of the 3^rd Order of Servites. Her  uncle, Brother Alexis Falconiere,, who lived to 110 was the last survivor of the seven founders of the Servites. She was received into the Order at a young age and remained at home until her mother’s death after which she and her companions moved into a house, the sisters’ first convent, where Juliana was made Superior, a role she held to the end of her life. The sisters wore black gowns secured by a leather girdle with a white veil.  The gowns had short sleeves to facilitate work with the sick and poor.  Juliana loved receiving Communion.  She served as Superior for 35 years but as death approached she was unable to receive the Eucharist because of vomiting.   

       The priest decided to avoid giving her the sacrament but she begged him to spread a linen cloth on her chest and deposit the Host on it.  Shortly thereafter to the amazement of all, the Host disappeared and shortly after this, Juliana died.  The image of a Cross, identical to the one impressed on the Host was found on her breast.  Immediately after death, she proceeded to be canonized by the Pope. 

          That’s why the statue of Juliana in our family church on the northwest side shows her in religious garb with the Host on her breast.