Five Loaves, Two Fish

I spent last night at the Little Portion Friary, an Episcopal monastic house which is a part of the Society of St. Francis, a worldwide monastic order following the rule of St. Francis of Assisi.

The reason for my visit was that a friend of mine--one of my first two mentors in EFM--was received as a novice in the order. The rite is called, I was intrigued to find our, the "clothing" of the novice--that is, the giving of a habit.

It was a very moving, surprisingly brief, ceremony. The order had just marked the passing of a brother, and a candle commemorating his life was burning on the altar. The Gospel reading was John 6, the story of the boy who gave five barley loaves and two fish which the disciples then presented to Jesus, and with which Jesus fed the five thousand. Brother Jude, the Minister Provincial, gave a moving, inspiring sermon, in which he focused on the often unremarked aspect of the story--the boy's generosity in giving what he had as a response to Jesus's generosity of spirit. Brother Jude emphasized that this, and not the "how" of the miracle is the point of the story.

How we respond to God is a part of what theologians sometimes call the economy of salvation; it's the part that is up to us. Jesus represents God's utter identification with his creation--his kenosis, or emptying out of all the aspects of divinity, as Brother Jude (following my hero Charles Gore) called it--and we are called likewise to a gracious, generous response.

A moving, warm, day among friends old and new. And a lesson learned, perhaps, in the way in which we should embrace our callings--not merely dutifully, but joyously.

There's An Elephant In The Room?

Ross Douthat's column today sounds a familiar theme to regular readers of this blog:

The words “freedom of belief” do not appear in the First Amendment. Nor do the words “freedom of worship.” Instead, the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans something that its authors called “the free exercise” of religion.

It’s a significant choice of words, because it suggests a recognition that religious faith cannot be reduced to a purely private or individual affair. Most religious communities conceive of themselves as peoples or families, and the requirements of most faiths extend well beyond attendance at a sabbath service — encompassing charity and activism, education and missionary efforts, and other “exercises” that any guarantee of religious freedom must protect.

****

You can see this confusion at work in the Obama White House’s own Department of Health and Human Services, which created a religious exemption to its mandate requiring employers to pay for contraception, sterilization and the days-after pill that covers only churches, and treats religious hospitals, schools and charities as purely secular operations. The defenders of the H.H.S. mandate note that it protects freedom of worship, which indeed it does. But a genuine free exercise of religion, not so much.

Now, without explicitly saying so, Douthat is essentially claiming that the HHS exemption is too narrow to comport with the First Amendment, that it is,in short, unconstitutional. Would it surprise you, gentle reader, to learn that Catholic Charities litigated and lost this exact claim in New York State courts, in a decision which the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review? And that Catholic Charities also challenged a similar contraceptive mandate in the California courts, and lost, too? And that both decisions relied heavily on Employment Division v. Smith, the Justice Scalia opinion which emphatically reaffirmed, with a myriad of citations dating back to the Victorian Age through the 1980s, that "We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate"? Smith remains the leading case in this area, and under it, the courts both state and federal have routinely dismissed First Amendment arguments identical to those made by Douthat. As I have previously pointed out, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in its materials claiming that religious freedom compels an exemption from the requirement that employers provide contraceptive coverage likewise implied that the Administration was violating the First Amendment, citing a case with no applicability, and studiously avoiding Smith, or the cases dating back to 1879 which it followed and applied.

So when you read these First Amendment claims that religious freedom must allow for such exemptions, ask yourself: What about the elephant in the room, and why won't these First Amendment mavens-come-lately address the actual case law?

Not So Much a Candidate for Husband of the Year

OK, I admit I'm not a dressage fan. Not my thing, really. But I have to admit to feeling a twinge of empathy for Ann Romney when I read this:

Much is made during the Olympics of the robust support systems needed to send an Olympian into competition. The parents, families and employers who rally around their athlete to get them to the games. The village it takes to make Olympic dreams come true.
But for Mitt Romney, whose wife Ann’s horse Rafalca will compete in the Olympic event of dressage, he makes it clear it’s really not his thing.
In an interview with NBC News Wednesday night, Romney spoke of the experience of being in the Olympics with the disengaged tone and shrug of a husband who doesn’t quite get his wife’s hobby.

“It’s a big, exciting experience for my wife. I have to tell you, this is Ann’s sport,” he said. “I’m not even sure which day the sport goes on. She will get the chance to see it, I will not be watching the event. I hope her horse does well. But just the honor of being here and representing our country and seeing the other Olympians is … something which I’m sure the people that are associated with this are looking forward to.”

Of course, this being Romney, he's lying--the article points out that he has been "associated with" Rafalca, selecting the "horse ballet" music for at least one event, and, sharing his wife's riding enthusiasm. (I have to admit, it's nice to hear that Romney has some personal tastes that don't involve brining in the coin.)

So, here we have a man who, for what can only be the infinitesimal flicker of political gain of distancing himself from his wife's "elitist" hobby, is cheerfully willing to disparage her not inconsiderable achievement in qualifying her horse for the Olympics. Nice guy. I hope he finishes last.

Edited to Add: I should say that my own enthusiasms--legal scholarship, theology, etc., can be a bit obscure, and my own wife has been very supportive, as I believe I am of hers. I find Romney's behavior characteristically gutless, but also quite offensive--this is the guy swaggering around saying he won't apologize for America (suggesting the incumbent does) and he can't even show support his wife on a day that is the culmination of a lot of time and work. The GOP really is nominating Gordon Gekko.

Why Betty Windsor's Olympics are Better than Mitt Romney's

A post in several clips:

1. Betty's Olympics Have Mr. Bean

Here he is:



2. Betty's Olympics Have Patsy and Edina



Post race interview:



3. Betty's Olympics Have Betty--and Bond



Mittens, you've been served.

Jeers to a Clown

So Mitt Romney, whose campaign claimed, in racially charged term, that his election would "restore Anglo-Saxon relations" between Great Britain and the United States, is not, in fact, going down well, there.

In fact, he's bombing. He was rebuked by both David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson--both Conservatives!--for retroactively insulting Britain's Olympic games. Cameron's riposte, "Of course it's easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere," i.e., Utah, was smooth, while Johnson's was epic:



Romney also managed to blunder in his meeting with Cameron, blithely telling the press afterward that he had met the Head of MI-6--not good form, old chap, it's a Secret Service!--and to forget the name of Labour Leader Ed Milliband during their meeting, addressing him as "Mr. Leader," a term not generally employed here or in the UK.

Also, "looking out the backside of 10 Downing Street?" Epic Fail.

As they say in LOL-cat land,needz moar Mandy Patinkin.

Avoiding Looking Facts in the Eye

In an interview with NBC News, Mitt Romney is quoted as having the following exchange:

WILLIAMS: "On things however like Aurora, Colorado, do you see why Americans get frustrated at politics. They can see and hear your words from earlier in their career, people are hurting out there. Perhaps they want to start a national conversation about whether an AR-15 belongs in the hands of a citizen, whether a citizen should be able to buy 6-thousand rounds off the internet. You see the argument?"

ROMNEY: "Well this person shouldn't have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them. And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won't. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what's essential, to improve the lots of the American people."

Except, of course, that James Holmes bought his armaments legally. (Hat Tip: Think Progress)

(According to the National Journal, Romney's campaign has subsequently claimed that Romney's observation was limited to the booby-trapping of hid apartment, and that "Holmes allegedly used legal materials to make an illegal bomb." Not what he said, unresponsive to the question asked, and of course, not taking a position on the ultimate issue--perfect Romney, in other words.)

This particular lie is a bad one; Romney is trying to avoid the consequences of our extreme devotion to guns and the fundamentalist interpretation of the Constitution that creates an unlimited "right" to have them for any purpose or no purpose at all. (The Second Amendment explicitly ties the right to the States' need for a "well-ordered militia" not the joy of blazing away at unarmed animals. Or humans, for that matter.)

This devotion comes with a high cost. Guns may not kill people, but they sure expedite the process of people killing people in bulk. Gun rights supporters have no right to blind themselves to that fact, or to expect us to pretend it isn't so. And when these massacres occur, they may want to weigh more carefully the cost of their freedoms to others.

Gratuitous Who-age

Have I mentioned that Series 7 of Doctor Who is getting perceptibly closer?

Well, it is:



I truly hope that the Ponds get an appropriate ending, but am placing my trust in Moffatt until the show airs. In the meantime, of course, there remain the Olympic Games, which I will dutifully ignore, unless this chap plays:



During the Olympics, if I'm watching anything, it'll be Season 5 of Leverage, so I'll get by.