Wisdom Wednesday | September 18th

We begin with two quotations, first from Pope Francis, “All religions are paths to God,” – which has shaken some Christian believers who are not familiar with Nostra Aetate, and a reflection on Springfield, Ohio, regarding political posturing: A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.

First of all: What did Francis say? Here is Catholic News Service:

Now, to Springfield and a commentary: No one is going to eat Rover. The writer says it was already an “old proverb” in the 19th century when Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon quipped, “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.” But if we are to be faithful to New Testament instructions to put away slander of any kind, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. We should refrain from propagating any disparaging charge that we cannot confirm to be factual, lest we, as the epistle of James puts it, “curse people who are made in the likeness of God.”

• Personal response: I grew up in Springfield; here’s the real story.
• Lawmakers of Haitian descent respond to Trump and Vance and their claims.

Election News

• Pope Francis criticizes Harris and Trump positions ‘against life’ and rejects single-issue voting. Two views, from National Catholic Reporter and the National Catholic Register.
• Recent news includes the effort by JD Vance and Georgia Gov. Kemp to project Republican unity at an evangelical event. From the AP.
• Realizing the speed of election news – maybe we should call it the “minute news” – here’s a good source, constantly updated, by the Associated Press.

Election section reflection

• Whoever would have thought that today’s American politics and professional wrestling have so much in common. Wrestlemania gives us bombastic boasts, nicknames, catch phrases and insults. Wrestlemania is where it is good to be a bad guy, because the only important thing is to stir up the crowd. If Donald Trump’s recent attacks on Taylor Swift, television personalities, journalists, political rivals and Haitian immigrants feel like something straight out of the pro wrestling circuit, it may not be a coincidence, according to analysis from Florida State College two years ago.
• The Associated Press provides some context from activities earlier this year.
• Depending on your political affiliation, Trump is playing one of two classic wrestling characters: The “heel,” or ultimate bad guy, who wins at all costs; or the modern-day wrestling protagonist, dubbed a “face” or “babyface,” in wrestling parlance.
• Where has Trump spiritual adviser Paula White gone? The onetime organizer of the former president’s evangelical Christian advisory board has been relatively muted in her public support in the 2024 election season.
• Evangelicals rally behind statement that hopes to combat polarization with revival. “I see this statement as a very important call to teaching, said Richard Mouw, a theologian and former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, who signed a statement urging evangelicals to reject ‘political idolatry.’
• Among the most ardent Christian nationalists today is a subgroup most Americans are not aware of but that is having an outsized influence on conservative politics and culture. That group, the New Apostolic Reformation. From Baptist News Global.

Season of Creation

• Each year Pope Francis urges us to celebrate the Season of Creation (September 1 – October 4) by considering what we can do to take better care of the earth. His special prayer intention for this month is: Pray that each of us listen with our hearts to the cry of the Earth and of the victims of environmental disasters and the climate crisis, making a personal commitment to care for the world we inhabit. Here is a link to a Celebration Guide.
• Catholics are among key backers of SCOTUS ruling that threatens environmental rules. From National Catholic Reporter.
• Opinion: A conservation-forward farm bill is critical to protecting God’s creation. Farmers know the land best — and they know the policies that will allow them to be most successful.
• An invitation: Sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty’s Faith Letter as an individual or as an institution to show your support

Politics and Catholicism

• The GOP has a surprising new target: the Catholic Church. As the GOP intensifies its attacks on Catholic social initiatives, the party risks alienating a key voting bloc that once found a home in its ranks. Analysis from US Catholic.
• Behind the Catholic Right’s Celebrity-Conversion Industrial Complex. From Russell Brand to JD Vance to Candace Owens, what happens when the Catholic Church chases influencers—and their legions of followers—down the rabbit hole of the right? From Vanity Fair.
• An invitation: Join the upcoming Georgetown Salt and Light Gathering, Young Adults in this Election Year: Rebuilding Broken Trust in Institutions and Leaders on Tuesday, September 24 in-person at Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies with a happy hour before the dialogue and a reception after. The dialogue will also be livestreamed.

Women deacons?

Theologian Dan Horan authors a bluntly stated : “Enough already. It is time to ordain women to the diaconate.”

Papal travels

• Christopher White reports for NCR: Pope receives exuberant welcome at Mass with 100K Catholics in Muslim-majority Indonesia.
• In his first address in Papua New Guinea on Sept. 7, Pope Francis deviated from his prepared remarks to specifically highlight women as “ones who carry the country forward.”
• Click here for the NCR full series on the pope in Asia and Oceania
• Francis not going to Notre Dame. The National Catholic Register reports Pope Francis will not go to Paris for the December 9 reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, on the afterlife

The movie, Between the Temples, gets some things right — and one thing wrong, says Rabbi Salkin, challenging Reform Judaism. Is the afterlife something like, “She lives on in our memories?” or is there more?” Salkin concludes that Judaism also affirms the reality of a life beyond the grave — even if most Jews do not believe it.

It’s happening: Polyamory

In May 2023, Kerlin Richter, then a priest at an Episcopal Church in Portland, Oregon, attended an adoption ceremony that legally recognized her baby’s three parents. Richter’s family includes her husband with whom she has an adult child, and her partner, with whom she had a baby in February 2023. As polyamory gains visibility in the broader culture, Religion News Service finds people in or exploring these relationships, which involve emotionally intimate, often sexual, relationships with more than one person.

Supreme Court: What’s next?

Conservative columnist Russel Shaw looks ahead to SCOTUS’ Fall ’24 Term. He says abortion may not be on the court’s agenda during the 2024 term. but the protection of children certainly could be.

‘Need-blind’ and ‘loan free’

Notre Dame University ‘Must Build Bridges in a Broken World.’ At his Sept. 13 inauguration, Father Bob Dowd announced that the university would go ‘need-blind’ and ‘loan-free’ for undergraduate students by replacing loans in financial aid packages with ‘gift aid.’

How a congregation can change its culture

We have two items. Debie Thomas, a seminarian at Church Divinity School of the Pacific and author of A Faith of Many Rooms, says it is “one thing to mourn empty pews and shuttered Sunday school classrooms and quite another to call time of death on the mystical body of Christ.” She says, “Call me naive if you’d like, but I’m not quite ready to do the latter.

In the second article, a writer for National Catholic Reporter finds a parish “rising from razing” on site of new Habitat homes.

Civics 101: Are we failing?

Do we need to know about our government? Thirty to 35 percent of college students can not pass the citizen test given to new arrivals. From the AP.

Take the Quiz: A typical set of questions is posed for would-be citizens. How well did you do