SENATE PASSES HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL

Now back to the House of Representatives for another vote, where Nancy Pelosi will steer the bill through to President Obama's desk.

From the New York Times:

After running through an obstacle course of Republican amendments and procedural objections, the Senate on Thursday afternoon approved of a package of changes to the Democrats’ sweeping health care overhaul, capping a bitter partisan battle over the most far-reaching social legislation in nearly half a century.

President Obama spoke about health insurance reform in Iowa City on Thursday.
Republicans, raising procedural challenges, identified flaws that struck out minor provisions to the bill. Because of those changes, it now goes back to the House for one more vote, though passage seemed virtually assured.

Democrats said they were confident the measure would soon be on President Obama’s desk for his signature.

The vote, just after 2 p.m., was 56 to 43, with the Republicans unanimously opposed. Senators cast their votes standing individually at their desks, a ceremonial gesture reserved for historic occasions. Three Democrats opposed the measure, Senators Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Count me relieved. I'll be even more relieved when the president signs the bill into law. Mary Landrieu voted yes. She said she would if the bill did not include the public option.

UPDATE: And the health care bill passes in the House!

MORE ON THE CHILD ABUSE SCANDAL

After so many posts that I've lost count, I'm pretty well played out with commentary on the child abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church throughout countries in Europe. Turns out that the abuse was not simply an anomaly in the materialist United States of America.

I probably have one more post in me before I reach true catharsis, a post outlining the worst of my personal grievances with the RCC, which may come in due time. For now I offer the best of the links which have come my way recently from the folks who truly keep Wounded Bird going, my faithful stringers. As I said in my comments, keep the cards and letters coming (preferably with cash enclosed), because I couldn't do this without you ;-). So. Instead of more commentary, I give you links and brief quotes from several news sources, to opinions and articles on the subject. I include one opinion column on the expulsion of two little girls from their Roman Catholic school because their mothers are lesbians.

From Andrew Brown's blog at the Guardian:

I said there was something extraordinary and rather shocking hidden in Mgr Charles Scicluna's interview last week. It's hidden in plain sight, so obvious that it has so far been invisible: there was no Vatican conspiracy. There was no Vatican cover-up.

Instead of one centrally ordered cover-up, there were hundreds of little local ones. They didn't require special regulations. They grew quite naturally out of the clerical culture. They worked by silence and omission rather than anything more obviously sinister. The scandal is going to be much worse as a result.

I'd concluded that the cover-up was handled from central command at the Vatican, because a similar pattern of protecting the institution rather than the children was evidenced in different parts of the world. Andrew Brown and Mgr Scicluna say otherwise, and they are probably right.

Thanks to Cathy and Lapin for the link.


From the New York Times:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

Thanks to Ann and Lapin.

The NYT's link to the documents of the lawsuits against Fr Lawrence Murphy contain information that is truly shocking.


From CNN:

An Irish bishop resigned amid a Catholic church sex abuse scandal, apologizing in a statement Wednesday for any abuse that occurred in his diocese.

Bishop John Magee of the diocese of Cloyne said he tendered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI on March 9.

"I have been informed today that it has been accepted, and as I depart, I want to offer once again my sincere apologies to any person who has been abused by any priest of the Diocese of Cloyne during my time as bishop or at any time," Magee said in a statement posted on the diocese Web site.

Thanks to Ann.


From Patrick Boyle at The Huffington Post:

With depressing regularity, the men who run the Catholic Church do something that reminds me of why I'm part of the fastest growing religion in the country: Raised Catholic.

You know the type. Someone asks us what our religion is, and we act like you've stumped us on a game show. "Well," we explain, "I was raised Catholic, but ..."

The reasons for the "but" are many, and the archbishop of Denver just handed us another: He kicked two little girls out of Catholic school because they are being raised by a lesbian couple.

Thanks to Ann V.

FEAST OF THE ANNUNCIATION

BOTTICELLI, Sandro - Cestello Annunciation - 1489-90 - Tempera on panel
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Image from the Web Gallery of Art.

Readings:

Psalm 40:1-11 or 40:5-10 or Canticle 3 or 15;
Isaiah 7:10-14;
Hebrews 10:5-10;
Luke 1:26-3

PRAYER

Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord; that we who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

From the Carmina Gadelica version of the "Hail Mary!":

HAIL TO THEE, MARY
Hail to thee, Mary, Mother !
Thou art full of loving grace,
The Lord God is always with thee,
Blessed art thou Mary among women,
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,
Blessed art thou, Queen of grace;
Thou holy Mary, thou Mother of Jesus,
Plead for me a miserable sinner,
Now and at the hour of death,
Now and at the hour of death !

STORY OF THE DAY - HANGING ON TIGHT

Of course I hang on tight, she said. You
can't believe the kind of stuff that
happens when you let go.


From StoryPeople.

A CAUTIONARY WORD....

From the comments to the post at Thinking Anglicans on Michael Poon's paper titled "The Anglican Communion as Communion of Churches: on the historic significance of the Anglican Covenant", comes a cautionary word from a member of the Roman Catholic Church:

Speaking as a very progressive Vatican II Catholic, the last thing Anglicans need is central authority and a magesterium. The Reformation was a good thing and millions of us are praying for a second Reformation in the Latin Rite Churches. The Bishop of Rome would be a nice unifying symbol but should have no more authority than any other bishop and he should be elected by lay people and clergy. The present system is in a state of decay and it is on the verge of imploding. Anglicans have a better system, especially Anglicans such as those in the American Episcopal Church. The minute fundamentalists try to force their views down the throats of their fellow Christians, is the minute the people of God need to stand up and say enough! May the structure of Anglican autonomy continue and show the rest of the Catholic and Orthodox world that this way is preferable and more in keeping with the early Church.

Posted by: Chris Smith on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 at 9:55pm GMT

Well-spoken, Chris Smith. Thank you.

Why is it that so many within the Anglican Communion cannot see the treasure that is the Anglican way? The creeds, common worship, and the bonds of affection are sufficient. If the bonds of affection are not present, the Covenant cannot force their presence. The Archbishop of Canterbury should be, as Chris says, "a nice unifying symbol but should have no more authority than any other bishop". And rather than a Covenant, we might consider Chris' other suggestion, "he should be elected by lay people and clergy".

Thanks to Lapin for drawing the comment to my attention.

THE MIRACLES OF EMAIL

Via the miracle of email, I received a message from Casanova Donahue saying that he wants to meet me. At least, he's up front about his intentions.

Oh, and I won the British lottery again, so let the requests for money for good causes roll in.

AND SHE DID IT WEARING HIGH HEELS!

Rachel Morris in the Guardian gives credit where credit is due. She points out that before the vote on health care reform the US media were tripping over each other trying to get interviews with Rahm Emanuel, all the while missing the real hero in the struggle to pass health care reform legislation.

In the grim weeks after Martha Coakley lost her campaign for Ted Kennedy's US Senate seat, Democrats were the picture of discombobulation. They had passed their healthcare bill in both the House and the Senate, but each chamber still needed to vote on final legislation that merged their separate versions. Now, Democrats had lost their filibuster-proof Senate majority, and the winner of the special election, Republican Scott Brown, was vowing to torpedo the final procedural business required to make the bill law. It was obvious that Obama and his advisers had no Plan B in place for a Coakley loss. No one knew what the White House planned to do next.

The day after Brown's victory, in an interview with ABC News, Obama appeared to signal that he planned to pursue a scaled-back form of health care reform: "To coalesce around those elements in the package that people agree on," as he put it. In the following days, it became clear that this was the strategy being pushed by Emanuel. In fact, from the very beginning, Emanuel had advised the president to pursue more modest goals – doubtless burned by his experience as a White House staffer when the Clinton administration suffered the catastrophic defeat of its healthcare overhaul in the 1990s. Overridden by Obama, Emanuel had been a good soldier and fought aggressively for the president's policy. But now that it had hit the rocks, he advised him to settle for reining in the most egregious insurance company abuses and expanding coverage for low-income families. In the Senate, majority leader Harry Reid also appeared to favour putting healthcare on the backburner.

The one Democratic leader who never publicly wavered from comprehensive reform was Pelosi, who derisively referred to Emanuel's downgraded proposal as "Kiddie Care". Members of her own caucus entreated her to think small, but she made it clear she would opt for nothing less than a sweeping change to the healthcare system. "My biggest fight has been between those who wanted to do something incremental and those who wanted to do something comprehensive," she later told reporters.
....

Throughout it all, Pelosi remained adamant that healthcare reform would pass.
....

Reporters couldn't seem to get past the fact that she was a mother of five and a grandmother of seven, and perhaps that's why her impressive ability to get things done has garnered a fraction of the ink that Rahm's colourful browbeating has inspired. Now, however, Emanuel the tough guy's cautious, incrementalist remedy for America's healthcare problems has been proven insufficiently bold, and the House speaker's push for go-big-or-go-home reform has won out. Obama, of course, played a pivotal role in this battle, But he couldn't have done it without Pelosi.

Rachel Morris understands our politics better than most of the media in the US, who tend to get stuck in a familiar groove. Then too, the herd instinct runs strong amongst US news persons. It seems to me that they'd rather be with their peers in deciding about which news to cover than "out there" on their own. I wonder if we could have another reporting event like Woodward and Bernstein in the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal.

So who's the tough guy here? Not Rahm, surely. I still don't see a media stampede to interview Pelosi.

When Obama chose Emanuel as his chief of staff, I was quite disappointed. Rahm and Obama are more alike than different in taking the incremental approach, and, for that reason, Obama needed a staffer who would fire him up, someone bold as his chief of staff, not a DLC type. The DLC folks, with their timid approach to almost every issue, inspire in me only slightly less anger than the Blue Dog Democrats, most of whom would fit comfortably in the less extreme wing of the Republican Party.

Thanks to Roger for the link.

IS THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND SERIOUS ABOUT WOMAN BISHOPS?

From Thinking Anglicans

The answers to the questions asked at last month’s meeting of the church of England General Synod are now available.

Questions with Answers February 2010.

Our good friend Dennis points us to a gem, Question No. 53 (p. 34), and the answers by Archbishop John Sentamu.

53. Mrs Gill Ambrose (Ely) asked the Chairman of the House of Bishops:

In view of the slow progress towards the development of legislation to enable the consecration of women as bishops, would the House of Bishops consider inviting a number of female observers to its meetings so that the insights of women are not lost to the Church at this high level of leadership and policy development?

The Archbishop of York: The simple answer is No. Although I regret the length of our legislative processes, there are no short cuts. Granting some women – however they were chosen – observer status now would not grant them a full voice in the House and would risk being a diversion from the central task, namely how to find a way of admitting women to the episcopate which also enables as many people as possible to remain in the Church of England whatever their theological convictions on that issue. We must continue to hold on to the view held by the Synod and the rest of the Anglican Communion that those who are in favour and those who are opposed are both loyal Anglicans.

Mrs Gill Ambrose (Ely): Are we to assume then that the Church can still afford not to hear the voice of women at this level when issues on which women have important things to say come up for debate in the House of Bishops?

The Archbishop of York: Many women are, in any event, members of bishops’ staff in their dioceses. Members of the House will consequently have had the benefit of their insights in policy discussions within the diocese which will inform the thinking that they bring to the House of Bishops’ discussions.

The selection of women observers would itself be invidious, I think. Other interest groups, for example young people, could also argue for such representation. Women have been present at the House as supporting staff: currently the assistant secretary to the House is a woman in holy orders. Policy matters are regularly brought to the House on appointments matters, educational issues, HR and training matters by women in advisory roles.

Pursuing this further, it would be invidious to suggest, for example, that when the House of Laity is considering some rather difficult theological issue bishops should be there as observers.

Slow progress toward women bishops in the Church of England, or no progress? If you do not cry at the wrongheadedness exhibited by Archbishop Sentamu's answer, you will laugh. So. It is sufficient that the women underlings have every opportunity to speak plainly to their bosses, the men who have control over their lives. A greater voice would be "invidious", according to the archbishop.

And the folks who fear girl cooties must be given time for what? Does anyone think they will change their minds? Is the extra time necessary for for the powers to find a way that the women can be bishops but not quite real bishops?

For heaven's sake, guys, just do it already!


UPDATE: An Englishman explains it all for us:

themethatisme said...

It would be invidious were it not for the fact that the House of Bishops can veto anything that comes to the floor of synod from the House of Laity so having anyone there as observers would make bugger all difference.

Just keep on pissing in the tea girls.

R. I. P. MARVA WRIGHT

 

From the Times-Picayune:

Marva Wright, the powerhouse New Orleans blues and gospel belter who left her job as a school secretary to sing around the world, died Tuesday of complications from a pair of strokes she suffered in 2009. She was 62.

Ms. Wright died at the eastern New Orleans home of her eldest daughter, where she had been living since her health declined last year.

Enormously popular among fellow musicians, Ms. Wright moved easily between gospel spirituals and bawdy blues romps. In her late-blooming career, she released albums on local and international record labels, and performed across Europe, in Russia and Brazil, and at blues festivals around the United States. She drew large crowds at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell, and staged an annual Christmas concert at Tipitina’s.

“She truly was and will remain the Blues Queen of New Orleans,” said Adam Shipley, Ms. Wright’s manager. “She was one of the highlights to ever grace the stage at Tipitina’s.”
....

She nurtured her early career in such Bourbon Street clubs as the Old Absinthe Bar.

“I love Bourbon Street,” she said in 2008. “If it wasn’t for Bourbon Street, I wouldn’t be where I’m at now. You meet a lot of people from all over the world.”
....

Her tenth album, 2001’s “Marva,” was a typically eclectic affair, featuring such guests as Bo Dollis and Terrance Simien. She covered Bob Dylan’s “Serve Somebody” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.”

“To me, those are gospel,” Ms. Wright said at the time. “It’s new wave gospel, but it’s gospel.”

Of “Marva,” she surmised, “You can’t say it’s a gospel CD, you can’t say it’s a blues CD, you can’t say it’s an R&B CD, you can’t say it’s a country CD. You can say it’s all of it.”

And I love this.

From January 2007 through March 2008, Ms. Wright sang most weekends in the Ritz-Carlton’s On Trois Lounge. After leaving the Ritz — she apparently sang too loudly for the lounge — she returned to Bourbon Street with her band, the BMWs, an acronym for “Band of Marva Wright.”

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Marva. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

May her soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

FEAST OF OSCAR ROMERO

Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is a duty.  (Oscar Romero, January 7, 1978)

About Archbishop Romero

Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (August 15, 1917 – March 24, 1980), commonly known as Monseñor Romero, was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador. He later became prelate archbishop of San Salvador.

As an archbishop, he witnessed numerous violations of human rights and began a ministry speaking out on behalf of the poor and victims of the country's civil war. His brand of political activism was denounced by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and the government of El Salvador. In 1980, he was assassinated by gunshot while consecrating the Eucharist during mass. His death finally provoked international outcry for human rights reform in El Salvador.

Prayer

Almighty God, you called your servant Oscar Romero to be a voice for the voiceless poor, and to give his life as a seed of freedom and a sign of hope: Grant that, inspired by his sacrifice and the example of the martyrs of El Salvador, we may without fear or favor witness to your Word who abides, your Word who is Life, even Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be praise and glory now and for ever. Amen.

Our friend Canon Lee Crawford (aka Caminante) is ¡Presente! in El Salvador to celebrate the feast. Let us pray for the safety of Episcopal Bishop Martín Barahona of El Salvador (pictured below) in light of the recent assassination attempt upon him and two of his close associates. Let us pray for safe travels for Lee.

 

Lee asks a Rhetorical Question:

Why does Mary Glasspool's receiving consents garner a comment from the Archbishop of Canterbury almost instantaneously (they must have had the text pre-written for either scenario) whereas when one of the 38 primates of the Anglican Communion nearly loses his life in an assassination attempt that results in his driver being gravely injured we hear nothing?

Why indeed?

Biographical notes and photo from Wikipedia.

UPDATE: Andrew Plus has a wonderful post in honor of the feast day.