A faculty-student strike at Catholic University

It was springtime, 1967, when trustees of Catholic University of America pushed Fr. Charles E. Curran’s name and picture into newspapers and television news programs. American Catholics, enthusiastic about their church when the Second Vatican Council concluded in 1965, were unsettled when those trustees announced that Fr. Curran’s contract to teach in the theology department would not be renewed.

A student and faculty strike began on April 19. Fr. Curran was cautious about talking to the press, and did not agree to my request—or anybody’s request -- for an interview. Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, the archbishop of Baltimore, intervened to assure Fr. Curran that I knew my trade and would probably not misquote him. Shehan had the political skills to become a cardinal; he had the commitment to conscience to become a saint.

So the interview went on. It was published in the April 28, 1967 issue of The Catholic Review and in the June 1967 issue of Catholic Mind. It is published below. In 1986 Fr. Curran was dismissed from Catholic U. as a dissident. A 1986 decision by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Josef Cardinal Ratzinger—now Pope Benedict XVI—declared that Fr. Curran was neither suitable nor eligible to be a professor of Catholic theology.

The American Association of University Professors issued a report that said, “Had it not been for the intervention of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Professor Curran would undoubtedly still be active in the [Catholic University] Department of Theology, a popular teacher, honored theologian and respected colleague.” Fr. Curran accepted a full tenured professorship at Southern Methodist University, where Catholic students are said to outnumber Methodists by a wide margin. Here’s the 1967 interview:

By A. E. P. Wall

A happily harrassed Fr. Charles E. Curran poked his head into the doorway of a fellow priest’s room [on the Washington, D.C., campus of Catholic University of America]. It was the same head that had been poking its way into millions of living rooms during the previous few days.

Fr. Curran Smiled and extended a sinewy arm. The T-shirt he wore emphasized his slender build and added to the visitor’s quick impression that he was shaking hands with a senior counselor at a boys’ camp. But it was an associate professor of moral theology who spoke.

For Fr. Curran it was the end of the first day of classes following the spontaneous shutdown of the Catholic University of America by its faculty and student body. Did it mean the end of his own active concern about changes on the campus?

“I don’t think it can be,” the 33-year-old theologian said after stepping into more familiar priestly attire. “The issues involve more than just one person.

“We’re going to have to improve the situation in many ways to allow for better communication in the area of theology itself and in the academic processes here at Catholic University.”

The words came out quietly. For Fr. Curran it was a simple statement of fact.

He had another fact in mind and he leaned forward in a massive leather chair to emphasize what he had to say. The dispute that began when Fr. Curran was told his contract would not be renewed had nothing to do, he explained, with birth control or any other doctrinal matter. None of the student or faculty strikers drew the issues in terms of obedience or disobedience to episcopal authority. The question, it might be said, was purely academic.

“The unanimous reaction of the students and the faculty,” Fr. Curran said, “is proof of the fact that the issue was not doctrinal or moral. Disputed issues do not produce a unanimous reaction.

“In this question the academic community was united. You couldn’t unite this community on birth control. You couldn’t even unite the academic community on God, because the faculty is not made up entirely of Catholics.”

The issue was academic freedom, to be exercised in harmony with university statutes. As an immediate issue it was resolved when the announcement came that Fr. Curran’s contract would be renewed and that an academic promotion had been granted.

Now, Fr. Curran said, it is time to consider some long-range relationships. “These relationships will affect theology itself and the work of all theologians in the Church,” said the popular young priest whose height—more than six feet—could not be swallowed up even by the hefty chair.

“The lines of communication—you might call them conduits—with the bishops have to be opened up,” Fr. Curran said.

He paused and then added: “This is not a revolt against authority. Ever since Vatican II we have known that authority in the Church must be exercised in new and different ways.”

Does this suggest a delegation of authority?

“No,” Fr. Curran said quickly, “let’s compare it with the way society functions today and in the past. At one time there was a monarchical form of government in most of the world. Today there is a movement toward democratic government. If you look at the structure of business today, at the corporation, you find that everybody throws in ideas and that there is little one-man rule.

“The Council told us that each one has his own role to play. This involves a dialogue and a listening process. As a practical matter it involves the opening of channels.

“I think there is a realization that authority will be exercised in a different way in the future. This is indicated by the organization of modern society, which does not operate from the top down. Each one contributes. We stimulate each other to contribute to the good of all.

“This sort of thing has to happen in the Church.”

Fr. Curran spoke of a greater participation by everyone in the Church, and he was asked whether he envisions the election of bishops by priests and the laity.

“That has been proposed,” he said, “and it is not a new idea. But frankly, let’s realize that there can be problems in elections, too.

“One of the problems of today is a unilateralism, an overly simplistic approach that leads men to say, ‘All you have to do is . . .’”

Although he doesn’t see voting as a guarantee of right action or democracy as a blanket to smother all discontent, Fr. Curran does see an opportunity for increased participation in Church affairs by both the laity and the clergy.

What about newspapers, radio and television as external communications media?

“We can’t ultimately solve all of our problems on the front page,” Fr. Curran said. “We must create a structure other than headlines.

“In the long, hard pull such structures can be difficult. The danger is that some people say we don’t need structures. We do need them, and they must be flexible, adaptable to the needs of the times.”

How did we get this way?

Christians celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation, the merging of the divine and human in Christ Jesus. This revelation was ahead of its time, proclaimed by Jesus and his followers to a primitive world.

We know more about everything today. The math of Herod’s time was not the math of Einstein’s. Changes are huge in what we know about agriculture, literature, medicine, law, astronomy and everything else. That includes religion.

Many leaders and followers in religious groups insist that God allows the development of every kind of knowledge except knowledge of religion. This notion of a limited God limiting the devout in their pursuit of religion, while granting unlimited growth in every other field of human endeavor,is disabling.The evolution of religious knowledge is resisted, not merely to protect a perceived franchise but in defense of convictions which are powerfully held, even if powerfully wrong.

Jesus provided a stunning revival of divinity’s eternal, perpetual adventure in humanity, an incarnation as old as Adam,and older. Incarnation may be celebrated as an event and as a process.

It might be called, with a smile, the Inplantanation and Incarnation, the divine purpose apparent in everything that lives and grows. Evidence that living plants feel injury, move toward sunshine and respond to care has been studied by scientists for decades. Incarnation began before the beginning.

Toyland, starting in 1929

At Christmas time I think of some of my favorite toys. Remember yours?

At age 4,on the last Christmas of the 1920s, I received a Lionel electric train, my dad’s choice. That same year I was given alphabet blocks with letters and illustrations on them. The only one I remember is Z for Zulu.

Age 6 brought a small cast iron truck, one of my all-time favorite toys, and space in the garden for building roads.

When I was about 8 years old I prized a toy that made lead soldiers and cowboys. The toy melted lead, which I poured into molds.

Another favorite was an electric burning tool, which burned designs and drawings into wood or leather.

A chemistry set provided hours of fun. I discovered that I could buy some of my replacement chemicals at the drug store, which was cheaper than ordering by mail.

A toy typewriter required dialing one letter at a time, and it did not know how to spell. It was succeeded by a hand-operated printing press.

A battery-powered Morse code telegraph toy, with keys for sender and receiver, allowed for the transmission of secret messages over distances of many feet.

I once envied my pal John Adams, who received 10 different titles in the Big Little Book series for Christmas. That was a whole dollar’s worth of books.

By age 11 my favorite possession was a bike, which had a speedometer. I rode it a lot and for long distances.

That period included another favorite, a small radio in my bedroom. This was before the time of FM radio and television. I heard the famous newscaster H. V. Kaltenborn report the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. I heard Adolph Hitler harangues on the rising and falling waves of sound peculiar to overseas transmissions, his strident tones bringing yells of Sieg Heil from the crowd.

--Ed

When the elderly act like the youngerly

Sometime after her 80th birthday my mom asked for help with a questionnaire. The blanks she wanted to fill in were blurry and her reading glasses no longer helped. She said she had become the child and her son had become the helpful parent. In fact, little kids are just starting to grow, learn and become self-sufficient, but the elderly have stopped growing, are becoming forgetful and need help with things they’ve taken for granted. It is a time of remembered independence and unsettling dependence.

My older friends, even those who have the same medical concerns that I have, are different from me and each other, even as we all adjust to a world of canes, wheelchairs and pills.

Several times a week I trade emails with a girl I knew in high school. We were in the same graduating class in the peaceful days before Pearl Harbor. I was in touch with several boys I knew as far back as kindergarten and one by one they disappeared, all of them. I treasure other friendships, some recent and some going back a long way.
My greatest blessing is my children and their spouses, and grandchildren. I don’t really think of them that way—as a group. Each one is precious and personal.

For all blessings I thank God, who is said to be the same now and forever, but who doesn’t seem the same as when we were introduced in the late 1920’s. When I was four years old I went to bed wondering what God was writing down about my day. It had been explained in Sunday school that God recorded every jot and tittle.

Eighty years later I go to bed after reading my Kindle, not expecting that God is noting that I broke a coffee carafe this morning. I have some inquiries of my own, such as how come there are so many wars and so many hungry people and so much sickness? Maybe that’s because I’m a journalist, always ready to uncap my fountain pen and write down what I see and hear. Even when God answers one of my questions I know there’s no point in trying to get it past the city editor.

Almost everybody offers help. It is almost impossible for someone with a walker to open a door. Someone leaps ahead and holds it open. Everybody who uses a walker in public is treated like a cardinal or a rock star, for whom all doors are opened. Neighbors offer rides, share friendship, shovel snow, carry packages, phone reminders that the garage door is still open.

There are lots of jokes about getting old, because old people can be funny, and not just when they shuffle like comedian Charlie Chaplin or when they blunder blindly like Mr. Magoo. There are wisecracks about wasting youth on the young, who don’t appreciate it, and about old age not being for sissies. But stresses begin at birth, not on the day Social Security checks begin.

Babies are cute, but grandma doesn’t have to be burped.

Lyndon B. Obama at West Point

It was a little bit like listening to Lyndon B. Obama.

When President Barack Obama spoke eloquently of his goals in far-off Afghanistan that name popped into my mind—Lyndon B. Obama. Lyndon Johnson began, like Obama, earning the trust and admiration of the nation. Johnson also began his presidency as a man of high ideals. It was not his good intentions, but his rickety judgment that disrupted a generation of Americans.

While Barry Obama was smiling in his crib in Honolulu, Vice President Johnson was answering questions for journalists in an impromptu outdoor news conference a few blocks away. It is memorable for me nearly half a century later, when memory tends to be fickle, because a reporter’s cigar shed glowing ashes onto my jacket, where they continued to smolder.

Within a year or so, Johnson had become president, promising a war on poverty but drained by a war in Vietnam and the urge to escalate, like a gambler who doubles his bets each time he loses until finally he runs out of chips.

Is Obama’s idealism, which has held great promise for him and the country, blurring his judgment, which until now has been so cool? A nation in economic recession, with a creaky education apparatus, unresolved health care issues and a rusting system of highways, bridges, rail and air transport, asks such questions.

In his address at West Point, President Obama spoke of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose family home isnearby, also on the Hudson River. Roosevelt, who began his presidency in the economic gloom of the Great Depression, was commander-in-chief when bombs rained on the island that would become Obama’s home. Hindsight shows that FDR didn’t always make the best decisions, as in the scandal of Japanese-American internment camps. He did not choose to go to war. The war came to him.

President Obama has more choices than FDR, plus whatever benefit there may be in hindsight, while an anxious world wants to believe in his foresight.

Instant news

Eighty years ago I watched my grandpa as he read the Jamestown Post. My grandma read Street and Smith’s Love Story magazine, while my mom was immersed in the CLSC – the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Society. I still have the diploma she was awarded at the Chautauqua Institution sometime around 1930. My dad went for detective stories.

I thought my grandpa’s choice was the best, because newspapers had comic strips. It was like learning how to play the game when, at age 4, I was enrolled in kindergarten, where Rose Crane taught me to read. Since then I’ve read every word that’s passed my eyes, beginning with signs posted in the streetcars warning that spitting was awful. It took me a while to learn that spitting may be awful, but the sign really said it was unlawful. So many words. So little time to learn them all.

Maybe it was genes, maybe it was destiny or maybe it was just plain luck that I became a newspaper reporter and editor. Maybe it was a blessing from God, like my children and grandchildren.

My life has been wrapped in newsprint.

So how come I’ve just cancelled my subscriptions to four daily newspapers?

Before that, things happened. Newspapers stopped using lead type and Linotype machines. They stopped using zinc for pictures. They even stopped using typewriters. Ways to publish the news have changed since Ben Franklin printed a page at a time.

The online newspaper editions are pretty good, and getting better. The arrival of an Amazon Kindle book machine at my house this week stirred things up. I stopped home delivery of countless pounds of paper and subscribed to two of the dailies via Kindle. The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune are ready for me by 5 in the morning, and dozens of papers are reachable through Kindle and my computer.

My dad earned his living playing the pipe organ during silent movies, providing the “bells and whistles” for the celluloid dramas. As a boy I learned how to set type by hand, reaching into the right compartment for each letter without a glance. Movie and publishing methods have gotten a lot better. Thanks for the memories, Mr. Gutenberg.

What does God care?

　
Religion is an ongoing investigation of the unfairness of life.

Religion looks at heroic humans who rescue strangers from floods and fires. It looks at others who murder, rape, steal and take pleasure in the pains of their victims. It looks at the brilliant and gifted, and at children born troubled. It sees the well-nourished and the starving and tries to understand why God’s standards sometimes seem to be lower than human standards

.
Does God not care very much about the world and its inhabitants, or can religion discover purpose in the lapses and deficiencies of creation?

Christians celebrate centuries of sermons, liturgies, sacrifices and praise by eliminating poor boxes because they attract thieves, and spending sums of congressional dimensions to pay off victims of abuse in churches, orphanages and schools.

Those who believe that God is Love are certain that God is not Hate, even though love and hate are both evident in the world. Christians famously denounce each other for thinking outside catechisms and tenets. Christian homes are not always the cheerful centers of cooperation and forgiveness that faith might encourage. Churches have been known to explode in angry confrontations between people, lay and clerical, who despise each other in the name of God. What can be more chilling than that? It was people of religious faith who favored the death penalty for Jesus, crying out for deadly torture on the cross

.
Scripture scholars, such as the late Father Raymond E. Brown, the brilliant Sulpician priest, have liberated venerable writings from some of the restraints imposed upon them by well-meaning guardians. They guarded the past, dragging their sandals as the past became the present. Customs changed, cultures developed, languages took on new meanings, but religion’s guardians kept it separate from life and froze it solid, right where it was many cultures ago. Although that attitude is described today as fundamentalist, it has little in common with fundamental, ongoing creation, symbolized as seven days by long-ago scribes, who did not lock up their scrolls after writing about the first day.

Some dispute the notion of God. Sometimes folks disbelieve in the same god, as in the gimme god of creedal capitalism, or the god who sanctions hatred, or the god whose followers have buried him in deserts past. I never figured out what God looks like, but I pray to the same Lord I've known for eight and a half decades, the Lord of all. I began those decades in a country that allowed legal discrimination against Jews, African Americans and others, discrimination which repudiated much that an earlier generation, including some of my ancestors, had fought for in a civil war. When I was young, some states prohibited interracial marriage, even as many now prohibit gay marriage. Only five years before I was born, and one year after my mother and father were married, the U.S. Constitution was amended to say: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States of by any state on account of sex."

One blessing of advanced age is its gift of perspective, of eyes that have seen members of a majority race battle in war, in legislatures and in courts to assure equal rights for all races and all persons, without reference to the gender, to the sexuality given them at birth.

Prayers never seem to get answered all at once, especially all of the "whereas" motions of the person at prayer, but somebody seems to be listening.

　

If the church looks hopeless...

The Roman Catholic Church is the gold-and-myrrh standard by which all Christian churches are evaluated, to the considerable exasperation of those churches and to the confusion of the Romans, who have no idea where anemia comes from.

Today’s Catholic Church is not the church of your grandma, especially in the United States. Around 1960 your mom might throw out Friday’s dinner because she inadvertently dropped a forbidden meatball into the spaghetti. She may have worn herself out shopping around neighboring parishes to find a confessional with a laid-back priest who would grant absolution from the sin of birth control.

Mom sat with the kids at Sunday Mass. Dad mingled with other men just outside the church, smoking and keeping within the prescribed number of feet of the building required for technical attendance at Mass. The priest was reciting the words in Latin, with his back to the congregation, while some of the faithful were reciting the rosary and others were reading English translations in their missals.

Faith was not complicated. Folks attended Mass and avoided meat on Fridays, dropped coins into the poor box, supported the school kids who sold subscriptions to the Catholic paper. People followed the rules most of the time. Everybody knew that on the day of his ordination, Father became God’s agent, able to bring Jesus to the altar and to forgive sins, a super-person respected fervently whether anybody liked him or not. Catholics did not compliment him on his sermons because everyone knew it was presumptuous to do so, inasmuch as all sermons were worthy of praise and did not need any comment from laity. When I was a young police reporter in the 1940s I was told not to report the arrest of priests charged with something called crimes against nature. To do so would be unsuitable in a family newspaper. Just the other day a cardinal said in an interview that, after all, only a tiny percentage of clergy is convicted of crimes against children.

The Church is the world’s oldest continuous institution, older than any government, so it is surprising how quickly it changed. All of a sudden the Mass was celebrated in English and other languages familiar to worshipers. Polls revealed that Catholic reliance on birth control was about the same as the rest of the population. Priests were arrested for sex crimes against children, even in Ireland, along with bishops, archbishops, cardinals and nuns. Seminaries and convents drew fewer young men and women. It is said that the Catholic press has never had less influence. Commonweal, one of the most distinguished Catholic magazines in a country of 70 million Catholics, reported a circulation of less than 20,000.

There are still more than a billion Catholics, but after a couple of thousand years some wonder what difference a billion Catholics have made in the world. Are countries formed in the Catholic culture – Italy, Spain, Haiti, Argentina – evangelizing the world? Has Europe, like the salt Jesus mentions, lost its savor?

Why, given such questions, is the Church still the most tenacious of all institutions? Its priests are the most giving of men, surrendering themselves not to bomb people in crowded markets but to show them how to live. Some, gifted politically, become bishops, only their faces visible among yards of decorated ceremonial fabric, a so-there to gowned secular princes and Pharisees. No matter how hopeless circumstances may appear, hope is the nature of Church.

Wondering about the game

In 1929, when I was four years old, carpet golf was as popular as the new talking picture shows and Lucky Strikes sold in flat-fifty cigarette tins.

My mom and dad took me to an indoor golf course, where the idea was to play a series of holes until reaching the most intriguing one, the final hole, which called for a sharp eye and determined swing. It was more interesting to a four-year-old than all the others combined, and that’s where I wanted to start.

This agitated my parents. Once a player popped a ball into the last hole it disappeared into a box. Game over, nickel spent, no refund. How interesting. I wondered what happened to the ball when it vanished, and remained more focused than my parents. While they were distracted with hole number one I managed to steer my ball into the last hole, where I heard it thump into invisibility.

I did not understand the despair of my mom and dad, because I had gone straight for the science of the game, the mystery of the vanishing ball.

The gift of life goes on for everybody until the gift of death arrives. I scarcely thought about it in a personal way until something reminded me of that disappearing golf ball, and I wondered about the next game.

Where did all the helpers come from?

Yesterday my beautiful daughter drove me to the supermarket, as she does every week. We each do our shopping, then she drives me home, whisks my packages into my kitchen and then goes home with her own groceries. Marie always makes me feel that life begins at 84, and that a rather exclusive ailment called olivopontocerebellar atrophy is something to be lived and explored.

Yesterday I learned a couple of things about my supermarketing. Marie acknowledged that she sometimes drops me at the store after her own busy day at work, then goes home for a shower, returns to the store and finishes her shopping just ahead of me. I had not noticed how much time I was spending in those aisles, and I was glad there was no taxi meter running.

The other thing I noticed yesterday was that other customers, strangers, occasionally offered to help me find something on the shelves or to load something from shelf to shopping cart. Why were they doing this? What was I doing to draw their friendly attention? I still have a pretty good grip on the shopping cart, which is a first class substitute for a rollator, and the supermarket is where I do my weekly walking marathon.

I guess that most life changes are as subtle as that, one day unknowingly drawing the attention of generous strangers, and realizing that your daughter’s love includes a lot of patience.

–Ed

Did you say something?

I remember almost everything that happened to me during the past 80 years, with the exception of whatever happened today. My Dad had been playing pipe organs to set the mood for silent movies, and then he installed sound systems for the new talkies. Almost everybody listened to the radio in those days. Radio announcers and actors were invisible. Their audience could not see what they were doing, or whether they were frightened or smiling. What they said was it. Enunciation was in, ear-strain was out.

Sometimes I don’t hear what’s being said. People amuse themselves by watching their words go in one of my ears and come out the other. This has little to do with how loudly or gently the words are spoken, but with olivopontocerebellar atrophy, the exclusive ailment I live with, known, if not very well-known, as OPCA. My OPCA experience now includes constant and intrusive dizziness. You’ve heard of taffy pulls, and probably seen the machines that pull strands of sticky salt water taffy in amusement parks. OPCA imitates that process. I walk around as though my head is stuffed with salt water taffy.

That taffy-pull makes me pay attention when I’m walking, or reaching for things, or taking a shower. This concentration often blots out other things going on at the same time. If someone is telling me something while I’m thinking about my next step or lifting my coffee cup, there’s a chance I will listen but not hear.

On the other hand, I sometimes miss what’s being said on TV or radio because of what historians may someday record as The Great 21st Century Lip Lapse. Even some of the pros drop syllables and merge words into each other, and some directors permit actors to dissolve their most fascinating words into a whisper understood only by alert lip readers. Could this difficulty in shaping words be a consequence of advanced styles of romance? Movies and TV dramas become more competitive, shootings become more bloody, car crashes more crumpling and kisses more aggressive. The Hoover kiss has emerged, its brief vacuum perhaps reshaping the lips, tongue and voice box.

Politicians and retirement brochures speak of golden years, sometimes seeming closer rust than gold. Every year is golden, but all is not gold that Twitters.

Coming clean about grime and punishment

Words were a pleasure the Victorians could display in public, an exercise of pure mind rather than impure limbs. Thus countless letters concluded with the words Your obedient servant, signed with whatever flourish could be managed without blotting the watery ink.

When I question my brain I’m always the obedient servant, obeying brain’s directions because I have no choice. Brain is in charge. It originates or vetoes all decisions. It doesn’t appear to think about them. The heart beats, a wound bleeds, the eyes blink, a lie is told, forbidden chocolate is swallowed, an angry punch is delivered, a smile appears and lunch digests without much of a thought, obedient to the brain and whatever instructions have been carried from brain stem to lower back stern by the body’s own Ma Bell network.

Talking to my brain is not like praying to God. I love God and really want to do God’s will. That requires choices. It is hard to know God’s will about killing people in a just war versus an unjust war, or even about killing prisoners when the robed priests of the judiciary turn their thumbs down versus killings authorized by government secret agents, gang bosses or other practitioners of organized grime.

This problem has been around for a long time

The apostle Paul had a problem with this, too. In his letter to the Romans, chapter 7, verses 19 and 20, he tells it this way: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

“Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.”

For Christians, sin is a technical word, the way heart is a technical word for surgeons and something else for Hallmark. Preachers sometimes call for punishing the sin and not the sinner, a view seldom applied to fellow preachers who are sex offenders. Paul once cited deference given to an unknown god, but if there’s an unknown devil its name is Sex, baffling and threatening to believers from the time of Eve. It is a religious mystery, but its experience is denied to the Roman priesthood. It lives on in an undercovers sort of way, especially among the laity. Some look to scientists, some to clergy, for answers.

Believers of all religions and of none feel an urge to live good lives while also, like St. Paul, pondering urges that may be disturbing. Systems of justice have no consistent way to deal with bad behavior beyond punishing the guilty in the same old ways. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t work.

What does matter is strengthening the search for justice and its lesser-known twin, mercy, particularly in protecting children from sexual violence. Ireland, which not long ago was a model for religious devotions, has imploded in sex scandals of historic concern. The victims were children and most of the accused were priests, brothers and nuns.

These and hundreds of similar crimes are reported day by day, but little is understood about preventing them. Apprehending the perpetrators, who include men and women of every description and occupation, is only a beginning. It should trigger heavy-duty programs to find out what makes otherwise ordinary men and women prey on children, programs comparable to campaigns against AIDS, polio, TB and other threats.

Does anyone choose to be a despised molester of little kids? So how do they get that way? Can they be identified and helped, or will they prey on the young until they’re sent to prison and their victims live on with the horror of it?

All we know for certain is that the prospect of prison does not deter the folks who commit these crimes. That’s not enough to know about this monster behavior.

When faith is lost, where do you look for it?

I like my house. I’m hooked on a heating and air conditioning system that keeps the place pleasant during blizzards and heat waves. Shelves of familiar books, a washer and dryer that always hum when we’re together, frayed favorite carpets, towels and shirts, all are plusses in this place where I’m used to the aggressive cat hair.

It isn’t as up to date as it could be, and it doesn’t have a swimming pool, but it is okay and comfortable and challenging all at the same time. It is sort of like church.

Sometimes faith gets dry, like the plants my wife left for me.

When things break down, I don’t ever think about walking away from the house and never coming back. Sometimes church breaks down, as in inquisitions, burning of witches, disdain for Christ’s example of love and forgiveness, sexual misadventures, cruelty toward the poor and the collapse of character into self-satisfaction.

Plumbing problems at home? I won’t move out. Integrity problems at church? They could provide a cover for religious anarchists, victims of neglect and spiritual loners to shed it all, but this lets a spiritual recession tumble into a great depression of the spirit.

Architects will build better houses as time goes by, and believers be better at building faith. Nothing is more real than faith, or less understood. The evolution of the created world is tediously gradual. So is the evolution of faith.

Church is described as the mystical body of Christ, unseen except in its human dimension of pulpits, pews and steeples. Faith in this visible church is a counterfeit of faith in the mystical body. To lose confidence in the pulpit is not the same as losing belief in God. Doubts come and go. The Eternal never goes.

Human faces fill empty spaces

By A. E. P. (Ed) Wall

I drove all of the navigable sidewalks on my electric scooter, but the neighborhood just looked empty. When you live alone there are times when you’d like to fill up those empty spaces with human faces. While I was bumping along, watching out for cracks and crevices in the pavement, I thought about a friend I haven’t seen in 70 years. We used to ride our bikes on sidewalks like that.

My wife’s diabetes took her into medical catastrophes as painfully pointless as waterboarding. At the same time I began stumbling and fumbling, courtesy of a neurological short circuit. We sold our house, said goodbye to a quarter century of friends, and moved a thousand miles or so to be close to family. Sally’s diabetes became even more aggressive, she moved to a nursing home, and didn’t live long after that.

Anybody who makes that kind of switch at a certain age, and with a disease that will soon stop him from driving, is lucky to have family and good neighbors nearby. But long-time friends and co-workers are not there. There are no jobs. If the move is into residential suburbia, and long winters, hobbies are savored. God bless computers!

So as I steered my scooter along bike paths and sidewalks my thoughts went from Billy Anderson, my 1930s bicycle pal, to others who put some real happiness and friendship into my life. I became so caught up in it that after I went home I started writing down the names, and picturing the people in my mind.

Some were childhood pals, some were girls I dated 65 or 70 years ago, some were co-workers and a couple of them were wives (but not simultaneously).

This was fun. I tried tracking some of them down via the Internet. I’m ruling out the grouches and remembering a lot of upbeat, smiling people.

This is dandy medicine. It isn’t covered by Medicare, but then, it doesn’t cost anything. It perks up the blood and lightens the feet. It will be a permanent part of my rebuttal when a self-centered mood starts to take shape, the mood that says even the silent monks see other monks, that a cat is good but not always good enough.

There’s no patent on this idea. Just think Rewind, and look for the cheerful voices and grinning faces out of the life you’re living. Call it daydreaming, call it mentalism, call it whatever describes it for you. I call it God’s gift—bigger even than the computer.

What we don't know about crime is a crime

By A. E. P. (Ed) Wall

The declaration that “all men [and women] are created equal” suggests more about the graceful character of early American patriots than about the intentions of a Creator.

Drawing upon English traditions and common law, the men who conceived the Declaration of Independence affirmed that everyone should have equal protection under the law. That was a revolutionary idea. It still is.

Angry revolutionaries seen on 21st century television sometimes risk their lives to challenge unjust rulers, but with more thought for the triumph of their cause than of equality for everyone, no matter what their religion or gender may be.

Men of property, planters and printers, teachers and preachers, were among the leaders of the American revolution and all they had to do was look around and see that all men were created equal to each other under English common law. Their eyes were upon each other, but they scarcely noticed their wives and daughters and sisters. Even those who were descended from indentured servants, shipped to the colonies, didn’t see slaves as equals under the law of the creator or the law of men.

Men voted for women’s rights

Many are the refinements of law, inspired by the revolution’s enthusiasm for persons more than property. Slavery was eventually abolished by white citizens who fought for emancipation. The right of women to vote was established by the only citizens who had the votes to do it--men. These were actions of a maturing society with an evolving grasp of what it means to be equal.

Whipping posts, dunking as punishment or interrogation, tormenting a prisoner in stocks, were rejected one by one. A prison cell for debt, self-defeating as it was, lost its place in the justice system.

Sending children to work in mines and factories came to an end, and children were given a status close to equality.

More recently the nation’s conscience began to unravel historic misconceptions about homosexuality. Maybe it wasn’t an ugly choice made by a disarranged mind, but instead a consequence of the way the genes lined up. Some babies were born with one sexual orientation, some with another, some were girls and some were boys, some had dark hair and some had light. Some, tragically, were born with alarming physical problems.

As people understood that being different is not the same as being unnatural, the punishment of consenting adults as criminals for engaging in homosexual activities came to a halt.

Laws to prevent two persons of different races from marrying? It seems incredible, but such laws were enforced not so long ago.

Knowing how little we know

Not even the sages of science were immune to the cramped beliefs of recent generations about criminality, sexuality and race. The smartest observers today know that most of what can be learned about these matters is still to be learned.

The United States is in the third world of justice and law, with the largest prison population on earth and disclosure that its highest officials sanctioned a return to torture as though 1776 had never been lived. Neither police nor courts, neither legislatures nor news media, know why people commit crimes. Burglary, rape, embezzlement, stabbing, cheating are predictable—but the people who do those things are not. Punishment hasn’t stopped those crimes in the last thousand years.

Shady impulses stir criminal behavior, and nobody knows much about it. Congress and state legislatures cannot even pass foolproof laws to wipe out their own institutional corruption once and for all.

People still look to secular government and to religious institutions to set rules of peace, justice and morality, and to be models of faithfulness to the rules. Instead, religion and state provide ongoing models of hope being dimmed by stress, indifference and corruption. Sexual abuse of children and adults is widely associated with churchmen, including cardinals and bishops in the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant evangelicals and leaders in other faiths.


How equal is dementia?

Religion’s adherents and converts may overcome failures, and encourage others to enrich the lives of themselves and others, but religious devotion is not expected to change qualities given to a person at birth. Religious teachings are generally presented in a “one size fits all” format, applicable to everybody in the same way. Nobody has figured out how someone who starts life with the burden of dementia, maybe an anti-social or psychosexual disorder, will absorb the golden rule as taught in Sunday school or celebrated in sermons.

Criminals cause crime, and it would be more efficient and cheaper to find out what’s nudging them and how to intervene, but it hasn’t happened. Apparently some people enjoy taking chances, pressing their luck without going to a casino, cheating on taxes and stealing from wimps. The glib claim that poverty causes crime has never been true, and its absurdity never more evident than in the arrest of billionaires for cheating themselves, their friends, the poor and the government. Prison terms are no more successful in wiping out crime than in preventing hurricanes.

Given the world’s experience with political organizations both secular and religious, campaigns, committees, letters to the editor, lawsuits and countersuits, climate change may put beaches on Pike’s Peak before justice issues are resolved. We ought to find out what really causes people to murder, steal and destroy, and how they might be drawn to healthier occupations.

Getting older? You bet your life

By A. E. P. (Ed) Wall

When I was a middle-aged fan of the feathered I used to think about retiring with binoculars in another decade or two, enjoying plenty of time for birdwatching.

When I finally got around to retiring the owls were hooting at me because I had the time, but I no longer had eyes that could even spot squirrels poking at my bird feeders. My ophthalmologist recommended that I buy bigger light bulbs. The owls hooted some more.

That was a long time ago. And now, 26 years after I joined, I’ve received a renewal notice from the AARP, as the American Association of Retired Persons is known. I’m offered a choice. I can renew for 1 year, or 3 years, or 5 years. As an optimist I’m opting for 5 years, which will cover me until a bit before my 90th birthday.

A friend told me that’s a ripe old age, and I thought I’d do a fact-check on that. What makes someone ripe? One reference book says something may be called ripe when its thread-like tendrils discolor and stop growing. Check!

Another way, especially if you’re wondering about a melon, is to rap on it to see whether it sounds hollow. If it sounds hollow, it probably is ripe. There’s nothing personal about this.

Growing old is an adventure, with risks, fears and satisfactions. Old age is sometimes treated as though it were a disease all by itself. Nobody has a cure for growth, or truly wants one. Old age is the consummation of human growth. Older folks have diseases. So do a tragic number of infants, children, young moms and dads. Jesus, who died young, offers the promise of eternal life, but no personal example of aging. No further example was unnecessary because, from the time of a person's birth, there's no change in Life's expectancy of a loving and generous spirit.

In the 21st century the words of Moses to Pharaoh resonate with power many generations after they were spoken. Exodus says that Moses was 80 years old when he insisted, “Let my people go.” In Psalm 71 there’s a prayer, “So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, till I proclaim thy might to all the generations to come.”

Now that’s a positive fulfillment of advanced age—to proclaim the power of God, not necessarily from a pulpit or in a letter to the editor, but by being a living proclamation of faith. Faith is explained by catechisms, but it builds from the inside out.

New friends from old memories

From the Post-Journal, Jamestown, N.Y., Sunday, June 7, 2009

By Ed Wall

Eighty years ago I watched my grandpa in his rocking chair devour the Jamestown Post, starting with the headlines and not stopping until he checked out the classified ads. I learned to read at age 4 because I wanted to know what the Katzenjammer Kids were saying in the comic strips.

Many years later the morning Post and its evening competitor merged into The Post-Journal, still printing the news, including births and deaths. I had lost touch with the family of Harold Lind, my 1930s boyhood pal in Celoron, so I wrote to The Post-Journal. I also checked listings with Ancestry.com on the Internet. Results were swift.

The Post-Journal letter was read by my pal’s nieces and nephews in Oregon, Delaware and New York. All were born after Harold’s death during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, but they knew about him.

They remember Harold’s parents, Walter and Ruth Lind, as their own dearly loved grandparents. Harold’s brother Warren died many years ago. Lady Lorna was Harold’ name for his little sister, Lorna, whose own children responded to my letter last month. Lorna died a couple of years ago. Her brother Laurel, called Larry, lives with his wife in Indiana. I remember him very well, even though I haven’t seen him in more than six and a half decades.

Larry wrote me that, thanks to the World War II GI Bill, he earned an electrical engineering degree, and worked for a major company. After retirement he spent several years as an electronic circuit design consultant.

"I remember you as my big brother’s best friend," he wrote.

I couldn’t think of a better way to be remembered.

My thanks to The Post-Journal and to all of the Linds, former Linds and near-Linds who have been in touch. Harold and I were inseparable when we were maybe 7 to 10 years old, and after my family moved away we were in frequent touch. We moved, as many did during the Great Depression. My dad, George H. Wall, was pipe organist at the Winter Garden theater and broadcast a daily program on Jamestown’s only radio station at the time, WOCL, but the national money crisis along with the advent of sound movies made it necessary to move on.
While I lived in Celoron with my grandparents, William Sheldon and Della Kinney Olmstead, I had all the children’s diseases that were standard in those days. When the doctor tacked a quarantine sign on the front door one day, allowing no visitors, I was discouraged because I heard nothing from Harold. The explanation turned out to be simple. We had picked up the same disease at the same time and were both quarantined at the same time.

We were both in uniform in 1942 when we spent Harold’s last Army leave, before he went to Texas for tank training, goofing around in New York City. I never saw him again. Harold was the kind of straight arrow, smart and upbeat, who should be remembered, and as Memorial Day approached this year I wanted to be certain he had not been forgotten.

I discovered from his relatives that there’s no chance of that.

Eyes on the dizzy button

By Ed Wall

The flu is getting the headlines. Maybe that’s why nobody seems to have noticed my new disease.

It attached itself to my long-time neurological ailment, which gives me a three-martini dizziness without the calories. As one who lives alone, except for a darting trip-triggering cat with feet fetish, I was recently persuaded to sign up with Rescue Alert. I was given a button to press in case of a bone-jarring fall or any other emergency. This button is attached to a cord, which I’m supposed to wear around my neck at all times.

Yes, it is waterproof.

Now I have developed two new psychiatric disorders, which are so new they are not even listed yet in the famous directory of mental diseases.

The first one is Bosom Anxiety. Will the next hug squeeze my button and set off a false alarm chain of commotion? It is almost impossible to talk to an Episcopalian without an embrace, and I worry about that even though I live among Catholics. If I were younger than 84 I might be anxious about other bosomy button pitfalls.

The second disease is Button Envy. When I’m out and around I try not to get scowled at, or maybe arrested, as I scan the chests of strangers. I’m looking for alarm buttons, of course, and when I find them there’s a compulsion to compare. Is the stranger’s button bigger than mine? And, although I have no bias, I note its color.

I’ve played enough Solitaire. My game now is Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button?

Killed in action, 1944

One of my favorite radio shows in the 1940s was a quiz show spoof called It Pays to be Ignorant. A zany panel of “experts” attempted to answer the questions, such as “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” That show comes to mind today because I was just too dumb to stop looking.

For a long time I’ve been trying to track down relatives of my best pal in elementary and junior high school. I’ve visited the house he once lived in on Celoron’s Gifford Avenue, talked to our teachers and rummaged around in Ancestry files. No luck.

Harold Elof Lind was born in Jamestown, N.Y., on July 12, 1923. We lived a few blocks apart in the village of Celoron, population about 700. On frigid January days we shivered together at the top of the bridge over the railroad tracks, wearing belts and badges that marked us as official agents of the school safety patrol.

Harold had gone off to college in Albany after making a perfect score on the New York State Regents exams, and even after Pearl Harbor he was given a draft deferment. Then the European theater needed more men. Harold was drafted and quickly taught whatever he needed to know about tanks. On what turned out to be his last leave, Harold’s parents drove the two of us to nearby Westfield, where we boarded a New York Central train for Albany so we could visit Harold’s fiance. After that we continued to New York City, where we spent a couple of days just poking around. We saw “You Can’t Take It With You” on Broadway and laughed a lot.

Harold was killed in action during the Battle of the Bulge on December 14, 1944.

Each year around Memorial Day I’m especially reminded of Harold, along with others who did not come home from World War II. I had turned to the Internet to try
to connect with anybody in his family, but I found nobody. Today I tried again, because the Internet keeps getting more useful and Ancestry.com widens its reach. Today I found a connection and hope to be in touch with a cousin or a friend of a cousin.

It is amazing what you can find when you’re too dumb to stop looking. The main thing is that Harold Lind did not die at the age of 21 and disappear from memory after that.

Defensive walking avoids bumps in the night

Defensive driving has kept a good many car radiators from losing their cool. It makes motorists something like Boy Scouts, whose famous motto is Be Prepared.

Defensive walking can save hips and lives when it is practiced by people who rely on canes, walkers, rollators and grab bars. Defensive drivers are alert to themselves and others. Defensive walkers are attentive mostly to themselves. Inattention can be the enabler that lets a slip, trip or tumble threaten hips, teeth and skulls.

Neurological ailments sometimes take over in a rush, and sometimes gradually. I was around 50 when I began bumping into things now and then, accumulating bruises and acquiring a walking stick. Like others who worked for a living, I tried not to make a big deal of it. My doctor had no idea what it meant. I was in my 70s before advanced medical knowledge, including new testing possibilities, brought a diagnosis of olivopontocerebellar atrophy, which my neurologist described as a form of Parkinsonism. It is known as OPCA.

By that time I was walking like Charlie Chaplin and learned to use a walker and a rollator, which is a sturdy version of a walker that’s designed for outdoor use, for walking around the block or to a neighbor’s house. I stopped driving when I was 81. It was my huge blessing that my daughter, son-in-law and five of my six grandchildren live a mile away.

Mine, like other neurological disorders, is progressive and does not yet have a cure. It manifests in some oddball ways, such as encouraging me to type hte instead of the. Dizziness and a gait with a mind of its own are constant companions.

Although it is not recognized as a sickness by psychiatrists, compulsive writing infected me long ago. This causes people to become journalists, and to continue telling stories even after they retire. This story is about defensive walking for folks who use canes. Some of the concerns are similar to defensive driving. Here are some lapses:

1. Inattention/distraction/fatigue while walking, whether at home where the terrain is familiar or someplace else. Don’t try to walk around while talking on the phone, or while chatting with somebody nearby but out of sight.

2. Poor lighting. Low-watt night lights make it cheap and easy to help guard against missteps at home. Moving around the house in the dark makes it too easy to trip over an animal or to slip on something the animal has done, or to trip over a misplaced object, maybe a broom or a chair or a shoe. I have night lights in bedrooms, bathrooms, even my living room in case I need to answer the front door or to get outside expeditiously.

3. Not bothering with gadgets. Some head for the bathroom in the middle of the night without reaching for a cane or walker. That’s not smart. After the fall it is too late to remember.

4. Hurrying. Take it easy. If it is an important phone call they’ll leave a message or call back. Don’t rush to the phone, day or night. There have to be speed limits for canes and walkers.

Accidents happen. But there’s no need to cooperate with them, to make it easy for them. They often can be avoided, and there’s only one person who can do it.

Respect life--and the Presidency

Joseph Cardinal Bernardin accepted the presidential medal of freedom from President Bill Clinton in a September 1996 ceremony. He and the liberal President did not agree on the divisive question of abortion, but each respected the office held by the other.

His successor as cardinal archbishop of Chicago, and as president of the Catholic bishops’ national organization, does not see things that way. Francis Cardinal George, a learned and holy man, has nevertheless denounced the University of Notre Dame’s offer of an honorary degree to the current President of the United States .

Cardinal Bernardin chose not to step onto the political stage. He tried to persuade non-Catholic Americans to agree that abortion is always wrong. He would have been unlikely to show disrespect for the presidential office or to insist that the president’s judgments must conform to Catholic teaching.

Other Americans who are committed to secular government are not enthusiastic about making decisions of the Second Vatican Council, whether concerning abortion or other matters, binding on secular elected officials. In its Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Vatican II listed abortion and torture among “infamies” and declared that “abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.”

As a lifelong advocate of protecting the unborn, I hope the Church will become more effective in persuading Catholics and non-Catholics. There is a major political dimension to this effort, and that requires cardinals and others in the Church to avoid the appearance of engaging in partisan politics.

The Church’s challenge to the President and Notre Dame suggests that although he has some reservations about abortion, that’s not a sufficient starting point. It demands total submission to Catholic beliefs.

The absurdity of this is evident in the fact that Catholics are nowhere near total acceptance of church requirements about humility, abortion, the real presence, contraception, the death penalty, just wars, racism, celibacy and the like.

Hard to ID an entire race

One of several reasons to enjoy Newsweek is the back-of-the-book column called The Last Word. In recent times it has been the product of George Will and Anna Quindlen, alternating their commentaries like a pendulum swinging from one side to the other, clever observers of what’s right about the world, and what’s left.

Anna Quindlen, who said she was eight years old when John F. Kennedy gave his inaugural address, has announced that she will no longer write her column. I was thirty-six when JFK delivered that address, and understand the values of retirement. But I’m sorry that the next issues of Newsweek will not include the Quindlen touch.

An admirer might, even so, pause over her comment that “America’s opinionators are too white and too gray. They do not reflect our diversity of ethnicity and race, gender and generation.” Journalists are not alone in sometimes seeing “white” as an all-purpose definition, but it is not. “White” racists viciously opposed the civil rights movement, even as “white” legislators and judges enforced civil rights and affirmative action. Some “whites” are Republicans and adore George Will. Some are Democrats and favor Anna Quindlen. There are “white” atheists, “white” Catholics, “white” Protestants. It makes little sense to speak of “white” as though it were a political, social and moral definition.

Old-fashioned shorthand is quick, but it doesn’t always make good journalism.

The innocence of atheists

There’s something breathtaking about the innocence of atheists, who claim that because they aren’t aware of God, God doesn’t exist.

A severe hearing impairment might cause someone to deny music, and to poke fun at orchestras going through an apparently silent liturgy of puffing, poking and pounding on instruments.

A faith impairment is a greater loss. Some accept it. Some are bothered that others get so much satisfaction from faith. They deny that believers have anything to believe in, because they themselves don’t.

Babies do not understand their parents, whose movements, if considered at all, are blurred in mystery. There’s the matter of diapers, middle-of-the-night burpings and making sure the baby doesn’t get tossed out with the bath water. The folks responsible for the baby’s life are there to help, whether the little squirmer understands it or not.

Some children are turned off by their parents, and some parents are humbled by their offspring. Some are turned off by God, never feeling the warm breath of divine parenthood. Some hate the God they do not know and get cranky about people who do know and love God.

For the faith impaired, the loss my cause nothing more than shoulder shrugs. Or it may cause a bitter fight against something imaginary, the imaginary God of the atheist. Atheism, like other forms of religious belief, can stimulate intolerance.

Even some who have the gift of faith will put it aside, like an unwanted birthday present from a zany aunt, and not think about it again. Like the deniers, they are loners in God’s community. The most aggressive among them want to make everyone a loner, to reshape believers into their own image and likeness.

It took millions of years for people to know about gravity. Happily, they did not float off Earth’s surface just because they hadn’t thought about gravity yet.

Maybe someday physical and spiritual impairments will just be footnotes in the textbooks of science.

—Ed

Confused columnist

They are the opening words of a Chicago Sun-Times column:

“Help me here, because I’m confused.”

Neil Steinberg confirms his confusion by linking his criticism of a statement by Cardinal Francis George to the Inquisition. The infamous Spanish Inquisition was launched by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1478, dredged up as a columnist’s news peg 531 years later.

This is like attacking a speech by President Barack Obama by regurgitating the infamous American inquisition known as the Salem Witch Trials, or denouncing a contemporary Supreme Court decision by citing the court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, which helped fire up the Civil War.

To cite grand errors committed by American democracy centuries ago to justify a disagreement with President Obama is absurd. So is citing painful excesses by religious fanatics of the past, whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Jewish.

In my opinion Cardinal George is wrong in declaring that Notre Dame University should not have invited the president of the United States as commencement speaker because of a political disagreement. President Obama is not a Catholic and is not subject to Catholic directives. Abortion is a moral issue, and it is also indisputably a political issue. Cardinal George is right to state the Catholic teaching and to try to persuade others to accept it, but shutting off communication with the world’s most effective public official would have been described by my grandma as biting off your nose to spite your face.

But writers are behind the times if they think this has anything to do with the Inquisition, Salem Witch Trials or Dred Scott case.

The Church has failed to make the case for defending life. Where is there a consistent, ongoing, popular and effective pro-life teaching program in a Catholic diocese? There are dedicated lay, clerical and religious workers in the pro-life field who need wider, more enthusiastic support.

The church has lost much of its authority on issues relating to human sexuality. That's because of the pedophile issue, which has been exploited by people who do not like the Church. Too many bishops deal with abortion as though it is dealt with in Church law and therefore does not require explanation or a consistent teaching and public relations program. Everybody would still be puffing on cigarettes if the bishops had been in charge of the program to combat lung cancer and other tobacco ailments. In 1965 the bishops would have issued an edict against smoking. They would have excommunicated smokers. They would have refused to vote for a smoking politician. Ordinary people would continue to smoke, because edicts do not work as well as education--call it public relations--does.

Obama is not to blame for abortion. Cardinals and others in authority have failed to convince enough people. Even cardinals rely on edicts while failing to teach the sacred value of life for the unborn,for prisoners, bombed-out civilians, the untreated sick and the unfed hungry.

Trying to explain a rare disease

Bob the pharmacist always starts with a smile, and so do his associates at my favorite prescription counter. I know they’re smart, because a pharmacy degree is among the toughest to earn. I know they want to help, because the speak up with tips and comments and they answer my questions.

One thing we don’t talk about is the missing prescription.

I pick up my bottles of pills for the heart, pills to block allergies, pills for aches and tensions, this and that — but there are no pills for what ails me because olivopontocerebellar atrophy still has no cure. It isn’t even easy to pronounce; hence its nickname, OPCA.

There are other rare diseases, and today’s afflicted are well served by the Internet. It has become almost magically simple to get in touch with others, patients and caregivers, who know about the most obscure diseases.

It is less simple to get in touch with medical specialists who are familiar with such things. Thousands of doctors may have lifetimes of experience in tens of thousands of cases without ever encountering someone with OPCA. Everybody knows what a headache feels like. Nobody who hasn’t been there knows what OPCA feels like.

People with all kinds of rare diseases post notes to each other in web sites. They belong to one of society’s least-known minorities. Here’s what some say in total frankness. I’m quoting real people, editing the words for context and to protect anonymity.

My family is clueless. I am a widow but when my husband was alive he also buried his head in the sand. People don’t realize that when I miss a social event I really can’t do it. They think I just don’t want to go.

This is one of the most common exasperations. Here’s a similar comment online.

My mother will call and go “Oh you sound sick,” in such a panicked voice that I end up comforting her. Then a few days later she will have planned a party that she will expect my husband and I to attend, which will mean driving there — spending the night and coming back the next day. Likely if I sounded sick a couple of days before, I am too sick to go; then we have the big fight that her daughter can’t come to her party. I actually found myself trying to take care of her, while I am battling an illness that has taken me from being an active athlete to a physically disabled person who has to has difficulty getting to the grocery.

There’s a Dear Abby heart in many who offer their personal counsel in the online support groups. They share observations like this one.

The people that matter the most are not always available to us emotionally. I always thought that parents, siblings, spouses, etc. “should” help with coping. Now I realize that my expectations were unrealistic. Unless I was in a counseling office with these relatives it is too much for them. Heck, it is too much for me a lot of the time, and I have the disease. I truly believe in support groups, wherever you belong, and reading lots of books and magazines about coping with a rare disease. I still struggle with specialists who understand the disease but don’t understand the person underneath the disease.

The father who upsets his adult child thinks he’s being helpful. That explains this note from one patient to others.

Every time my dad calls he says, “Wow, you sound so good today, you must feel great” ....what? Or when I see someone in my family they say something inane like “You look so good, you must be feeling good.” I could just cry. Sometimes, that is all I can do in a day is get dressed.... Invisible diseases, one neuro told me, are the worst to get family members to support. You look okay therefore you are okay in their minds.

Along with the communication problems among families and friends, there are some high points as well. Here’s the experience of one writer who shared online.

There are some friends who come over, bring lunch, laugh about the latest “news” and even take me for an outing. I have always enjoyed working with teens. The youth pastor at my church understands that I am ill and can’t always do. This year the youth Christmas party is at my house, all I have to provide is the space. I will get to enjoy a houseful of teenagers, and some good responsible youth workers, and all manner of silliness in my home. I found out that I can continue my work with teens, in a different way — we can’t go rock climbing, but I can listen when someone has a broken heart or provide a space to be that is safe. And maybe I am teaching them a bit about kindness.

Every day I get to read notes written from the heart by people whose lives might appear to be quite ordinary to their families and neighbors, because their diseases are unknown and invisible. Others punch their notes into computer keyboards accessible to their wheelchairs or beds, the effects of their diseases more evident to others.

One invisible symptom of rare invisible ailments is a particular kind of loneliness, a loneliness of frustration. Some folks begin to wonder about loose screws when their friend or relative with a rare disease tries to explain what it feels like. Who ever heard of a sore skull?

You mean a headache, says the friend.

No, it is not at all like a headache. The skull feels squeezed in a vice and the head feels full of bubbling oatmeal. Maybe it takes one to know one.

Dropping in on Obama

Like Lincoln, President Barack Obama speaks the language of faith. Like Lincoln, he is not infallible. Unlke his predecessor, George W. Bush, Obama knows this.

It seems inconceivable that Jesus might embarrass Obama if he were to walk into the Oval Office, the way he might have embarrassed Bill Clinton with an intern or Richard Nixon muttering antisemitisms.

Christ Jesus teaches the values, which have no value if he has to impose them. His teachings were not recorded by Jesus. He once wrote on the ground, with his finger, while Pharisees were testing him with a question about a woman caught in adultery. (There’s no reference to a man who might have contributed to the adultery.) Christians may wonder why Jesus wrote only in the shifting impermanence of dust. Nobody knows what Jesus thinks about the way his words were written down by others.

If the incarnation is to offer Jesus as fully human, then the miracles should be (1) natural events that people might emulate; (2) dramatic events intended to provide memorable lessons; (3) important events which so overwhelmed the biblical writers that they were described in terms reflecting their awe.

In a couple of hundred words, this is pretty much the religion of Jesus:

• You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22 NRSV

• But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

• When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pray then in this way:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you;
but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Matthew 6 NRSV

We’ve added curlecues, exclamation marks and liturgies to this. We’ve liturgized candles and incense, which were practical necessities in Bible times. We’ve built a religion industry, but few of its executive officers would be at ease in the presence of Jesus who might say something like "You judge by appearances, but I do not judge anyone."

We have produced millions of words to claim exemptions and exceptions from those couple of hundred words. We’ve been influenced by ecclesial lobbyists to accept or not accept ancient ferocities, destruction of enemies, sexual and hygienic proscriptions and other speculations about human evolution during the quick soundbite of history that’s memorialized in the scriptures.

The study of evolution suggests that we have not been at this for very long. Humankind’s spiritual dimension in just coming out of the ooze, not sure whether to swim or crawl. The best is still to come.

Inauguration: Don't forget Truman

My ticket to the presidential inauguration is colorful and in good condition. Its only flaw is that I already used it, 60 years ago at the inauguration of President Harry Truman. I shivered, along with everybody else who watched the Jan. 20 ceremonies outside the Capitol. As a journalist, I noticed that arrangements had been made for the relatively new medium of television.

I was registered at Washington’s Hamilton Hotel. It seemed like a good idea to watch some of the television coverage, so I asked for a TV set in my room. I was lucky enough to get one of the few sets available. It was wheeled in and I was charged a rental fee equal to one-half of my room rate. The room was $8 - the TV was an additional $4.

The ticket entitled me to a seat across the street from the White House reviewing stand. I think I remember - 60 years is a long time - that the parade lasted for seven hours.

It was a double-decker, with thousands of marchers on the pavement and armadas of military planes overhead.

At the time, I was the 23-year-old editor of a national labor paper, and I was gung-ho for Truman. At another time, I was a reporter on a daily published by William Randolph Hearst. My assignments included dredging up comments from advocates of Gen. Douglas MacArthur for president. I covered Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy during their 1960 campaign visits to Hawaii, which had just become a state. I wrote Spiro Agnew’s biographical sketch for the Official Inaugural Program when he became vice president. That was before it was disclosed that his term as governor of Maryland had something in common with later Illinois disclosures.

While I was a journalist in Honolulu, a kid with a Kenyan dad and a Kansas mom was enrolled in a local school. After he grew up and delivered a breathtaking speech at the Democratic National Convention four years ago, I wrote a July 5, 2005 op-ed column for a Florida newspaper suggesting that Barack Obama could become president in the Lincoln mode.

I don ‘t have a ticket this time, but I have a TV set.