9/12/2025

 Friday, September 12, 2025

D+311/236/-1226

1960 John F. Kennedy stated he did not speak for the Roman Catholic Church, and neither did the Church speak for him.

2005 Israel completed its unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip after dismantling Israeli settlements and withdrawing its soldiers

2011 Closing on our house in Bayside

2023 US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opens an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, without a formal House vote, amid some Republican calls to remove McCarthy from leadership

In bed at 10, up at 5:50, thinking of Trump, so lusting after the Nobel Peace Prize that his nemesis Obama won, renaming the Defense Department the War Department.   56°, high 74°, partly cloudy day.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 7 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 9 a.m.

This is the Pietà in the apse of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a sculpture by Nicolas Coustou and my favorite sculpture.  It is very unlike Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.  What is so striking on Coustou's Pietà is Mary's outstretched arms and anguished, accusing face, so unlike Michaeangelo's Mary.  Notre Dame's website describes the Coustou Mary : "The Virgin turns her grief-stricken face toward the sky and opens her arms in a gesture of acceptance and offering."  I have never shared that interpretation of 'acceptance and offering.'  To me, the sculpture depicts Mary confronting God, "How could you let this happen?!?", the same question humans have been asking God from the beginning.  All good, all knowing, all loving, all powerful, yet He permits, he tolerates, all the evil, wicked things that happen in our world, all the suffering,  Indeed, John Calvin tells us that He predestines it.  In any case, I thought of the two Pietàs after reading Peggy Noonan's column mentioned below.

Thoughts and prayers.  From Peggy Noonan's op-ed in this morning's Wall Street Journal:

During recent national traumas we’ve heard the side argument over “thoughts and prayers.” Something terrible happens, someone sends thoughts and prayers, someone else snaps, “We don’t need your prayers, we need action.” They denounce the phrase only because they don’t understand it, and give unwitting offense. (I always hope it is unwitting.)

Prayer is action. It’s effort. It takes time. Christians believe God is an actual participant in history. He’s here, every day, in the trenches. He didn’t create the universe and disappear into the mists; his creation is an ongoing event, he is here in the world with you. When something terrible happens and you talk to him—that’s what prayer is, talking to him, communicating with concentration—you are actively asking for help, for intercession. “Please help her suffering, help their children, they are so alone.” “Help me be brave through this.”

It’s active, not passive. Catholics, when they’d pray over and over or with friends, used to call it storming heaven. It isn’t a way of dodging responsibility, it is (if you are really doing it and not just publicly posing) a way of taking it.

So pray now for America. We are in big trouble.

. . . .

We’re going to have to be strong, not lose our heads, and not give in to demoralization. William F. Buckley used to say, “Despair is a mortal sin.” You wouldn’t feel it if you had faith that God is living through history with you. Hold your hope and faith high and intact, keep your perspective in the long term. 

I'm tying this note at 8:30 this morning, with the television on, waiting for the news conference announcing the capture of Tyler Robinson, aged 22, for the assassination of Charlie Kirk.  I'm reading and thinking about Peggy Noonan's words about "God" as I think about this latest assassination, this latest murder by gunfire, and I'm feeling some physical anxiety about life, in general and about America,   In yesterday's New York Times, there was a printed and videoed interview by Robert Siegel of David Brooks and E. J. Dionne, headlined as "When Authoritarianism Looms, Old Friends Reunite."  I was struck by Brooks' comment:

Since 2010, we’ve been in a tide of global populism. . . To me, what we’re looking at is not a momentary shift to authoritarianism, but a generational shift toward savagery. What I worry about is the complete deterioration of the global order. That includes the order at home — the way rule of law works here — but it also includes the global order all around the world.

So my worry is less about how much our rights are being restricted, which I don’t think they are too much right now, and more about how much the global atmosphere is deteriorating. Is civilization deteriorating? My answer would be: a lot. 

Brooks has become more religious as he ages, even as he sees this 'generational shift toward savagery,' a 'complete deterioration of the global order,' and 'civilization deteriorating.'  Wazupwidat?   I concur in his judgment that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.  That is the world my children and grandchildren will live in when I'm gone.  It seems like we are in a period like the era after World War I, when communism replaced the Tsarist autocracy in Russia, and fascism replaced the constitutional, parliamentary monarchy in Italy, the Weimar democracy in Germany, and the parliamentary republic in Spain.  There are endless studies of what led to the ascendency of totalitarianism in the 1920s and 1930s.  What will History say led to where we are now?  And what role did God play in all of this, God who Maureen Dowd reminds us is "in the trenches" with us?  The preachers usually have an answer, and the answer is usually complete horseshit.  I wonder what the Blessed Mother, ever virgin, would say, Coustou's Mary and Michelangelo's Mary.

Lazy, criminal Mexicans.  Four workers took care of our basement yesterday, a 'gaffer' and 3 others, one of whom was Peter  Martino, the son of the company's owner, Steve.  The gaffer, however, was a woman, a Latina, Nubia.  Perhaps she was a Mexican, perhaps some other nationality.  Perhaps she was an American citizen, perhaps not.  Perhaps she had a green card, permitting her to work in this country, perhaps not.  All four of them were prodigious workers.  I was reminded of the work crew who ripped off our old roof and installed the new one, all Hispanics speaking Spanish, and all prodigious workers.  Ditto for the crew who installed our neighbor's roof near the same time.  I was reminded of the car wash workers I saw in Phoenix while visiting my sister, mostly Mexican and all prodigious and thorough workers.  I am confident that none of them were sent here by the Mexican government, eager to rid itself of 'bad hombres.'  I am fairly confident that they were not rapists and murderers.  Our country will suffer from the mass deportation of Hispanics that is going on now.  Our people will suffer, especially elderly Americans in assisted living facilities and nursing homes.  A terribly ill-thought-out and ill-carried-out policy.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  I was a stranger and you took me in.  What you did for the least of these, . . . Do evangelical Christians believe any of these teachings?   

 Steve Martino stopped here at 4:30 to pick up the paperwork for the basement job.  He brought Geri a box of Italian cookies from Peter Sciortino's Bakery on Brady Street.  The three of us schmoozed for half an hour of so about all sorts of things.  He served in the 82nd Airborne in 1977.  He advised us to consult with Best Carpet, 3771 S. 108th Street,  Greenfield WI 53228, (414) 543-6543 bestcarpetwi@sbcglobal.net (Located at Hwy 100 and Beloit Rd).