Saturday, October 19, 2024
2003 Mother Teresa of Calcutta was beatified by Pope John Paul II
2016 Donald Trump refused to say he would accept the result of the election during a debate with Hillary Clinton
In bed at 8, awake at 5 and up at 5:30 with a sore lower back.
Prednisone, day 158, 5 mg., day 9/28. Prednisone at 5:45.
Executive function; memory loss? I went to bed last night leaving my rollator in the vestibule. I don't recall being aware of this or concerned about it as I got into bed nor during 3 or 4 pit stops overnight. I was very aware of it as I got out of bed this morning with a stiff, aching back and was thankful that I had a cane leaning on the nightstand. I have been writing in this journal every day for about 2 and 1/4 years, except for a couple of weeks when I was laid up with polymyalgia rheumatica. Every so often I have ruminated about why I do it and one persistent reason has been to keep tabs on my mental/cognitive condition. I was at the tail end of my 81st year when I started 'keeping notes' and I'm now in the first quarter of my 84th, a time of debility, disability, and decline. I don't want to ignore signals that I am "losing it." Last night's experience with "Judy" is troubling. For at least the last couple of months, I have taken the rollator into my bedroom each night to
have it available during the night for 'pit stops' but mainly to have it available each morning when I get up with my assortment of morning aches and pains. How could I have been so oblivious last night about the rollator? It troubles me.
Regulars at this here shebeen know that we have little or no use for Timothy Dolan, cardinal archbishop of the Diocese of New York. Of all the American princes of the Church, outside of that ridiculous popinjay Raymond Burke, Dolan is among the most insufferable. He plays the jocular, backslapping Irishman while his rap sheet on burying the ongoing sexual-abuse scandal is one of the longest of all his fellow members of the Clan of the Red Hat.
As a parish priest at the Church of the Immaculata outside St, Louis, he shared a pulpit with Fr. LeRoy Valentine, who is alleged to have abused boys for years before the Church took any action at all, shining on survivors who came to it. According to survivors who came forward, Dolan claimed to know nothing about the man with whom he served at Immaculata. He climbed the greasy chain of command until he was archbishop of Milwaukee. When the scandal hit there, Dolan transferred $57 million worth of assets off the archdiocese’s books and into a cemetery trust fund where it would be sheltered from the lawsuits coming down the tracks. From The New York Times:
Cardinal Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, has emphatically denied seeking to shield church funds as the archbishop of Milwaukee from 2002 to 2009. He reiterated in a statement Monday that these were “old and discredited attacks.” However, the files contain a 2007 letter to the Vatican in which he explains that by transferring the assets, “I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.” The Vatican approved the request in five weeks, the files show.
So it couldn’t have been a surprise when Dolan sat next to El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, yucking it up as the adjudicated criminal dropped a multi-megaton bomb at the Al Smith Dinner in New York. He whined. He took cheap shots at the other guests. He even swore. Speaking about former mayor Bill de Blasio, he said:
“We have another former New York City mayor with us. Frankly, easily the worst in our history. And it’s not Michael [Bloomberg]. That, I can tell you. I’m surprised that Bill de Blasio was actually able to make it tonight, to be honest. He was a terrible mayor. I don’t give a shit if this is comedy or not. He was a terrible mayor. He did a horrible–he did a horrible job. That’s not comedy, by the way. That’s fact. But unlike the rest of New York, at least Bill doesn’t have to worry about the criminals. They owe him big. He let them get away with a lot of stuff.”
No worries, sir. Nobody in the rapidly petrifying audience thought this was comedy. You should’ve delivered this speech at Los Alamos.
And this on the same day that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agrees to pay $880 million to victims of clergy sexual abuse. As in all things, the most important element in all comedy is timing.
The National Catholic Reporter is to be commended for hitting Dolan upside his zucchetto for criticizing the vice president for not attending—a mistake, I think—while ignoring the felon in the woodpile.
Perhaps it would be best to stop here to collect our breath and spend a moment or two reflecting on just who should be placed on the spot for engaging in less-than-civil behavior, as well as contributing to the diminishment of Catholic identity and credibility in the public square. Even in this era of the endless gush of stuff coming at us on every manner of device, it is possible to cull reality from it all. In the case of Trump, the material almost outruns social media's ability to keep up.
But first, a quick look back at the cardinal’s role in all of this, which extends to a well-reported recording of a phone call he made to Trump with other Catholic leaders in 2020. The two exhibited a kind of unctuous, ecclesial-political bromance, the former president declaring the cardinal a “great gentleman” and a “great friend of mine.” He also gave a nod to an implicit quid pro quo to paying attention to what his eminence “asks for.”The sin here is not that Kamala Harris had the good sense to reply, “No thank you, I’m previously engaged.” The real scandal is that the good Catholic cardinal of the great city of New York would not have the courage to say, this year, that the current Republican candidate is a walking example of so much the Catholic Church finds repugnant in today’s politics that he would suspend the normal invitations.
In this morning's NYTimes, the Irish-Catholic Maureen Brigid Dowd, an alumna of Immaculata High School and the Catholic University of America, took her turn lambasting New York's Irish-Catholic archbishop:
The cardinal should go to confession.
Timothy Dolan let a white-tie charity dinner in New York showcase that most uncharitable of men, Donald Trump.
At the annual Al Smith dinner, Dolan suffused the impious Trump in the pious glow of Catholic charities. Dolan looked on with a doting expression as Trump made his usual degrading, scatological comments about his foils, this time cloaked as humor.
. . . . .
Dolan could have stood up and told Trump “Enough!” We have been longing for that voice of authority who could deliver the Joseph Welch line — “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” — to our modern Joe McCarthy. It is the church’s job, after all, to teach right from wrong.
Instead of telling Trump he was over the line, Dolan enabled him in his blasphemous effort to cast his campaign as a quasi-religious crusade and himself as a saintly martyr saved by God. The conservative cardinal didn’t care about soiling the legacy of the great Democratic patriot Al Smith.
Trump is proudly amoral. He disdains the Christian values I was taught by nuns and priests. His only values are self-interest and self-gratification. He has replaced a code of ethics with the Narcissus pool.
Certainly, Dolan is happy with Trump’s abortion crackdown. But can’t he see that Trump is corroding our country’s moral core? . . .
The pols on the dais looked like a Last Supper for this unnerving election. Hopefully, it’s not a Last Supper for the Republic.
I love the not-so-subtle way Dowd includes Dolan himself as one of "the pols on the dais." Timothy Dolan has given me the creeps ever since he was appointed archbishop of Milwaukee, succeeding Rembert Weakland. His phoney-baloney effusive ebulllience led me to nickname him 'Mr. Joyboy' after the Rod Steiger character in the 1965 movie version of Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One. Mr. Joyboy was the chief embalmer at Whispering Glades Cemetery, modeled after Los Angeles's Forest Lawn Cemetery. He was and is an ambitious ecclesiastical climber and was rumored to have a shot at becoming the first American pope, an appointment that would no doubt please him. That he enjoyed sitting next to and schmoozing with Donald J. Trump at the Al Smith Dinner tells us a lot about the man and, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So, forgive me, Father, I'm glad that many people saw fit to dump on him for it. Oh, and I resolve not to sin again (but with these two, I know I will.
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