When the World Thinks Well of You

Published on by D. G. Hart

Chicago’s Mayor, Rahm Emanuel on Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich:

What does he offer the city itself as a whole – you’re not Catholic yourself are you?

I’m Jewish. I would just add that his message, well obviously he’s speaking first and foremost to Catholic followers, has a universal value to it, one of tolerance and one of inclusion.

No modernism to see here (cue shrug), but that salt seems to have lost its flavor.

6 thoughts on “When the World Thinks Well of You”

  1. Can Michael Sean Winters imagine that Donald Trump is poor?

    Whatever else happens in the next four years, we know that American culture needs the Gospel now more than ever, and that the fears we hold must be combated with that equanimity that comes from faith. Not the neo-con Jansenist gospel that has distorted perceptions of the Catholic faith in the public square for too long, but the real Gospel, the one that is good news to the poor. The church can never be first and foremost a political actor, but I expect the opposition to Trump will come, quickly and forcefully, from the church, both from its leaders and from the people in the pews. That expectation is a little less certain than the hope that animates it: There will be some cranky culture warrior bishops who cling to Trump and excuse his destructive policies. But, by and large, the bishops and lay Catholics I met, while not spoiling for a fight, are not afraid of one either. Neither am I.

    See more Shakespeare. Appearances are deceptive.

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  3. Vatican II employed:

    Cardinal Blase Cupich took possession of his titular church last night, San Bartolomeo all’Isola. He joked that the pope had not just given him a church, but an entire island. He then noted the powerful imagery of an island, that it is a refuge amidst troubled waters. He then went on to say that an island can be approached from all sides. This is the difference between a churchman in the model of Pope Francis and a culture warrior. We see the phrase “culture warrior” and usually focus on the hot-button culture issues that concern them, but the problem with culture warrior bishops is as much the warrior part. I could imagine a different American bishop talking about how an island serves as protection against the flood waters of secularization. Cardinal Cupich called attention not to the isolation of an island, but to its accessibility. How often does Pope Francis talk about accompaniment and encounter? In Cupich, and the others, he has found new cardinals who look for ways to engage, not to denounce.

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  4. Rahm’s appearance at Cupich’s promotion ceremony should be taken as nothing more than political grandstanding, since he has such a massive RC constituency.

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  5. Chicago needs all the clergy it can get–so many funerals from gun fights

    The clergyman told the mother her dead daughter’s body was just a shell. “For now and until I tell you otherwise, she’s my daughter. ”

    Thomas Lynch: “What if, rather than crucifixion, Jesus had opted for suffering low self-esteem for the remission of sins? What if, rather than ‘just a shell,’ God had raised only the personality of Jesus or the idea of Jesus?

    Leithart– In 1533, Hugh Latimer, already well-known in the city of Bristol, preached a series of sermons attacking “pylgremages, worshpying of saints, worshypyng of images, off purgatory, &c. in the which he did vehemently perswade towarde the contrary. In the Reformation, idolatry was the problem; high sacramentalism allied to a high Christology was the solution.” https://theopolisinstitute.com/idolatry-and-the-reformation/

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  6. Without seeing what the Chicago Cardinal has said, there is not enough info here to come to any conclusion about whether the salt has lost its flavor.

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