Bishop apologizes to pope for "distress"

Bishop Richard Williamson, one of four Society of St. Pius X bishops whose excommunications were lifted by Pope Benedict XVI last Saturday, apologized in a letter to the Vatican today for the "distress" caused by his "imprudent remarks" denying that the Holocaust ever happened. Bishop Williamson, who has said that he does not believe 6 million Jews were deliberately gassed by Adolf Hitler, stirred up controversy this week, among the international Jewish community in particular, adding fuel to an already smoldering fire over the reversal of the excommunications by Pope John Paul II of the four illicitly-ordained bishops in 1988.

The bishops were consecrated in an unsanctioned ceremony by Archbishop Marcel Lefebrve, founder of the Society St Pius X, whose ultra-traditionalist members take issue with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Pope Benedict XVI addressed the Holocaust controversy during his Wednesday audience this week, saying:

"In these days in which we remember the Shoah, my memory turns to the images taken in during my repeated visits to Auschwitz, one of the concentration camps in which was carried out the brutal massacre of millions of Jews, innocent victims of a blind racial and religious hate. As I renew with affection the expression of my total and indisputable solidarity with our brother recipients of the First Covenant, I hope that the memory of the Shoah moves humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the human heart.

May the Shoah be for everyone a warning against forgetting, against negating or reductionism, because violence committed against even one human being is violence against all. No man is an island, a well-known poet has written. May the Shoah teach especially, as much the old generations as the new ones, that only the tiring path of listening and dialogue, of love and pardon, leads peoples, cultures and religions of the world to the desired encounter of fraternity and peace in the world. May violence never again humiliate the dignity of man!"

Vatican visitation of U.S. women religious, Part 2

A Catholic News Service reporter was at the press conference today at the National Shrine in Washington, D.C., announcing the visitation. Here's the story.

Our Sunday Visitor did a story last April on the challenges of Catholic identity that some orders of women religious are facing in the United States. It catalogued a series of abuses that are taking place, from a form of radical feminism to questionable uses/disposition of funds and Church property. The story received some attention both in the United States and at the Vatican. Read it here.

Breaking news: Vatican visitation of U.S. women religious

The Vatican has initiated an "apostolic visitation" of U.S. women religious "in order to look into the quality of life."

The visitation, announced today, is expected to last about two years, and is headed by a Connecticut native, Mother Mary Clare Millea, superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The visitation's website is apostolicvisitation.org.

More to come.

Michigan stigmatist dies after a quiet life

The Michigan family man was a Knight of Columbus, a retired factory worker and a World War II vet. He also was apparently a stigmatist. Joseph O'Brien has the story in our Feb. 8 issue:

"Irving 'Francis' Houle's death early this year didn't make national news. He wasn't what the world would consider either a mover or a shaker.

"But his death touched many in the Michigan Upper Peninsula Diocese of Marquette and around the country who knew Houle through his prayer ministry and as a healer of bodies and souls.

"By all accounts, he led a relatively normal life. He was survived by his wife of 61 years, Gail Houle, and five children, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He was raised on a rural farm in upper Michigan, graduated from a Catholic high school and served in the Army during World War II with an honorable discharge in 1946. He was a factory worker and a Knight of Columbus.

"And he also apparently had the stigmata. Read more.

It took a while, but Galileo will get his due

Once condemned by the Church for saying the earth revolved around the sun, Galileo Galilei today was praised in a Vatican statement as a "believer who tried, in the context of his time, to reconcile the results of his scientific research with the tenets of the Christian faith." At a press conference, the Vatican proclaimed that the Church will honor Galileo on the 400th anniversary of his first observations with a telescope for being an "innovative genius and son of the church." The focus on Galileo is part of the larger International Year of Astronomy. For the full story on the Vatican's newest efforts to reclaim Galileo, who was "rehabilitated" by Pope John Paul II in 1992, check out this story by Carol Glatz on CNS.

Although the Church has taken some not-so-gentle ribbing at times for its centuries-long view of Galileo's discovery as heretical, the reality is that the Vatican has long maintained its own observatory, Specola Vaticana. Headquartered at the Pontifical Villas at Castel Gandolfo, Italy, it is one of the oldest astronomical research institutes in the world.

In an interview with L'Osseravtore Romano last year, Jesuit Father Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the observatory, addressed the Galileo controversy, saying that no one can deny the conflict occurred and no on can say that similar conflicts might not arise in future. That being said, the world needs to "turn the page" and move on.

"I believe that the Specola has this mission, to stand on the frontier between the world of science and the world of faith, to bear witness to how it is possible to believe in God, and at the same time to be good scientists," Father Funes said.

Of course, no matter how grand the observatory and how good the intentions, the Church will probably never live down its condemnation of Galileo or the fact that it took hundreds of years to come around and admit that poor misunderstood Galileo was right after all.

Being shallow now

The recently published interviews of 37 prominent American Catholics (and ex-Catholics) on their relationship with their faith is a "verbal collage of what went wrong with a generation," OSV publisher Greg Erlandson writes in a review in our Feb. 8 issue:


"Being Catholic Now" (Crown, $24.95), by Kerry Kennedy, is the kind of book that gives me a headache.

"There is so much wrong about it, so many proud manifestations of ignorance, so much smug self-absorption on the part of Kennedy and the many 'prominent Americans' she interviewed that it is a chore to make it through a single chapter, much less the entire book.

"It is the kind of book that had me talking out loud, and writing notes in the margins IN CAPITAL LETTERS with exclamation points.

"And yet I can recommend it as a sociological treasure, a verbal collage of what went wrong with a generation, and perhaps a signpost to where we need to go in the future. Read more.

Pope Benedict XVI recently touted online social networking technologies as a "gift to humanity." But from the Church's point of view, the question remains: Are these sites faith-neutral, or are they a positive force?

In our Feb. 8 issue, Dennis Poust explores the Catholic presence on Facebook, which is among the most-popular social networking locales on the web; and conducted all of his interviews exclusively through the site:

"When Pope Benedict XVI offered praise recently for the "digital generation," and specifically the potential of the fast-growing social networking scene, he was not so much urging a new evangelization as he was acknowledging that it already exists in full force.

"Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and others have transformed the way young people (and, increasingly, the over-30 set) communicate with each other. It is also rapidly transforming how Catholics interact with each other across the globe and how they approach evangelization. Read more.

How gullible are you?

As expected, President Obama has begun his campaign to promote abortion from the White House. Instead of simply reacting angrily, prolifers need to breathe deeply and think seriously about what's going on and what's likely to happen next.

In particular, the more gullible among those who usually are described as social conservatives need to resist the temptation of imagining that because Obama takes a low-key, seemingly reasonable approach, what he's doing really isn't so bad.

Something written by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. provides a useful key to grasping that point.

Writing after the president's executive order that restored funding to groups which perform and promote abortion overseas, Dionne — an Obama partisan and faithful Democrat — said Obama had waited until the day after the annual March for Life in order to "poach constituencies" from the Republicans by presenting an appearance of non-confrontational moderation.

If Dionne is correct — and almost certainly he is — that goes a long way to undercut the foolish reaction of those individuals who felt, or professed to feel, that Obama was doing them a favor by not sticking it to the pro-life movement while the marchers were still in town.

I have in mind people like "progressive evangelical" Jim Wallis of Sojourners, who reacted to the executive order by gushing that the president was "showing respect" and creating "a new common ground" by waiting 24 hours to do the deed. One can only suppose that Wallis is the kind of chap who, after being punched in the nose, hastens to thank his assailant for not also punching him in the stomach.

Among other things, Wallis' reaction ignores the fact that in postponing the executive order until late in the day on a Friday and then avoiding fanfare about it, President Obama saved himself needless headaches by delaying most media coverage until Saturday — the day of the week when people pay the least attention to the news.

So, Obama's repeal of the "Mexico City policy" has gotten the administration's pro-abortion ball rolling. What comes next? The president says he looks forward to working with Congress on restoring federal money to the U.N. population agency and its abortion programs. Administration sources sketch the same scenario — Congress and White House working in tandem — for lifting the restrictions federal funding of embryonic stem cell research that President Bush imposed by limiting it to cell lines that existed at the time of his decision.

Others think there's a good chance that an attempt will be made to repeal the Hyde Amendment barring federal money for Medicaid abortions. (Reportedly under pressure from Obama to compromise, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats dropped from the economic stimulus package a provision for non-Medicaid contraception and abortion which critics called a bailout for the abortion industry.) Waiting in the wings is the Freedom of Choice Act, elevating abortion to the status of a fundamental right in the eyes of the law.

What's discernible in all this is Obama's desire to let Congress do as much of the dirty work on abortion as he can. The president, for his part, will back the pro-abortion measures even while declaring respect for those who disagree, and piously expressing hope that the number of abortions will decline.

Against this background, it should be clear that social conservatives who then suppose they're scoring points because Obama's demeanor is mild and his rhetoric is moderate will have earned the punching around they're likely to get at the hands of this very smart man and his friends.

His life is pro-life

Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, was honored with a Life Prize Jan. 23 for his ongoing efforts to protect the lives of the unborn. Doerflinger, who has been on the pro-life front at the USCCB for almost three decades, recently reflected on the movement's recent past and what looms ahead in the not-so-distant future with Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online.

In the wide-ranging Q&A, Doerflinger said many things that anyone interested in or involved in the pro-life movement needs to hear, but if you read only one quote, this should be it:

"I wish people realized how many times the Catholic Church has been proved right in its predictions about various directions being bad for us as a society. We said the widespread distribution of contraception would increase temptations to abortion and divorce, mislead people into thinking they could have sex without consequences, and threaten to trivialize sexuality. Is it possible to deny this has happened? We said depersonalizing reproduction through technologies such as in vitro fertilization would lead us to experiment on human embryos and tempt us to try human cloning. We said embryonic-stem-cell research was not only immoral but was being used to make promises of “miracle cures” that people couldn’t keep. In a way it’s frustrating to be right so often in these dire predictions, especially when hardly anyone ever comes back later and says 'Gee, sorry, you Catholics were right.'"

To read the full interview with Doerflinger, click HERE.

The Williamson controversy

Reaction to the Vatican’s lifting of the excommunications of four Lefebvrite bishops continues to create more heat than light.

That one of these bishops, Richard Williamson, holds some odious views, is undeniable. The Vatican’s offer, however, has nothing to do with those views and everything to do with ending a long running schism in the Church. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have made a series of efforts to heal a rift that started over the authority and declarations of the Second Vatican Council and has become a cause of scandal and division in Europe and elsewhere.

Reaction, however, has been almost universally negative in the secular press, which has added two and two together and gotten five. Most recently a Jerusalem Post editorial has suggested that the pope is more concerned about cozying up to the far right than in nurturing relations with the Jewish people. It also repeats the many attacks on Pope Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope,” another wrong-headed reading of history that unfortunately has chilled Catholic-Jewish relations. The newspaper calls on the Israeli government to recall its Vatican ambassador.

The Vatican has responded to the general media cacophony with an editorial denouncing the over-reaction to the Lefebvrite decision. Unfortunately, the news cycle has moved on, and now the media message has solidified around the theme of Vatican insensitivity, or worse.

The Church will not step back from its consistent efforts since Vatican II to heal relations with our “elder brothers,” and it will continue to reject all forms of anti-Semitism. At some point, however, we can only pray that these cycles of praise and denunciation that have characterized Catholic-Jewish relations come to an end. The Church will not retreat from its position, but the growing atmosphere of distrust makes it hard to move forward.

Welcoming guest-blogger Mary DeTurris Poust

As you may have guessed from the signature on the previous post, Mary DeTurris Poust, a former OSV contributing editor and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Catholic Catechism, has rejoined the blogging team here at osvdailytake.com.

She also blogged with us during Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United States in April.

Mary's got a great news eye, no-nonsense blogging voice and Catholic perspective, all with an occasional splash of humor. We're glad to have her back. Watch for her posts, which will be roughly once every weekday.

Loss of a leading voice on morality, ethics

Still reeling from the recent loss of Cardinal Avery Dulles and Father Richard John Neuhaus, the Church now mourns the loss of Msgr. William Smith, moral theologian extraordinaire. I had the privilege of calling on Msgr. Smith repeatedly over the course of my career as a Catholic journalist, always assured that he would not only take the call quickly but would offer solid and authentic viewpoints on the moral and ethical issues of our day.

Msgr. Smith, 69, died Saturday. He had been a professor of moral theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, NY, since 1971 and advisor to three New York cardinals.

For a nice take on Msgr. Smith and the role he played on the stage of moral debate, check out Gary Stern's story in The Journal News by clicking HERE.

OSV: 'Conduct study of newly ordained'

OSV's editorial board has called for a national study of newly ordained priests, as a follow-up to the release this month of the report on Vatican-commissioned "visitations" of U.S. seminaries. Here's the newsweekly's editorial from the Feb. 1 issue:

For many years now liberal and conservative Catholics have debated the quality of U.S. seminary education, and by extension the quality of the men who have been called to serve them as future priests.

Now, a 20-page summary of a recent Vatican-requested study of 229 college and theology-level seminaries gives a thorough appraisal of both the strengths and weaknesses of the seminary system today, concluding that they are, "in general, healthy."(See story, Page 5.)

It found that since the last major study of U.S. seminaries in the 1980s, there was more stability and many improvements on the campuses. The doctrine of the priesthood was well taught in the majority of diocesan seminaries, it said, and the candidates are generally "full of zeal, pious and faithful to prayer." Moral problems such as homosexual behavior were less in evidence.

Areas of concern include intellectual formation, particularly in the area of moral theology, and seminaries were encouraged to take certain steps to improve spiritual and human formation as well.

Perhaps most striking in the letter was the distinction it made between diocesan seminaries -- generally supervised more closely by bishops -- and houses of formation for religious orders, which were more likely to be chided for laxness and even "widespread" dissent from Church teaching.

The study certainly implies that Rome, the bishops and the religious orders have some big challenges in terms of evaluating their service to the broader Church and improving their priestly formation.

While the report confirms that in most cases seminary institutions are getting on the right track,the some larger problems remain significant.

First, the numbers and quality of candidates is a concern asthe priestly ranks shrink. The study exhorted bishops to be selective in choosing candidates, worrying that the falling number of applicants puts pressure on seminaries to lower standards and accept "obviously unsuitable candidates."

Even the best candidates these days, however, often need remedial education in the faith because of poor catechesis, and the difficulty in finding and retaining good priestly educators is a growing problem. Fewer priests mean fewer qualified and available teachers, which in turn affects seminary formation.

Priestly formation is critical in terms of the commitment to spiritual and ascetic practices and an acceptance of celibate chastity. At the same time, young priests must be well formed to serve a Catholic laity that is much more shaped by the individualist ethos of secular society. Adult faith formation and pastoral ministry must be critical priorities for every pastor, and these priorities are more likely to be effectively addressed if a generous and mature spirit of servant leadership is cultivated early on.

Now that this study has been concluded, we encourage the bishops and the Vatican to conduct a study of young priests after they have been ordained. Questions have been raised about the numbers who walk away from the priesthood in those critical first seven years, including the quality and quantity of mentoring and the risk of burn out from isolation and the premature burdening of young priests with huge pastoral responsibilities.

There are no easy answers here, but what we do know is that all Catholics -- bishops, priests and laity -- must be part of any solution to better encourage, form and sustain vocations.

Parishes spring to help newly unemployed

With joblessness on the rise, Catholic parishes across the country are looking for creative ways to help, from providing free job listings in bulletins and newspapers to complete employment assistance counseling.

Scott Alessi reports on the trend in the Feb. 1 issue of Our Sunday Visitor:

As out-of-work individuals nationwide scour job-search websites and flip through the classified pages, many are discovering that the best path to re-entering the workforce may be through their local parish.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the national unemployment rate had risen to 7.2 percent in December, the highest it has been in the last 15 years. The number of people out of work has grown steadily since the economic collapse in October and is a dramatic increase over the unemployment rate of 4.9 percent only one year ago.

With companies continuing to cut employees from their payroll, parishes nationwide are beginning to launch ministries aimed at helping those who are looking for work to connect with potential employers and develop the skills necessary for finding a new job.

Rena Chrysler, director of stewardship and administration at St. Edward Parish in Bloomington, Minn., told Our Sunday Visitor that the parish first began to notice that its parishioners were falling on tough times when the weekly collection began to dip....

Continue reading.

Pope's telegram to Obama

From the Vatican's press office this morning, here's Pope Benedict XVI's telegram of congratulations to President Barack Obama on the occasion of his inauguration.

And no, he doesn't explicitly mention abortion, but urges respect for the dignity of "those who have no voice."

THE HONORABLE BARACK OBAMA
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, DC

ON THE OCCASION OF YOUR INAUGURATION AS THE FORTY-FOURTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA I OFFER CORDIAL GOOD WISHES, TOGETHER WITH THE ASSURANCE OF MY PRAYERS THAT ALMIGHTY GOD WILL GRANT YOU UNFAILING WISDOM AND STRENGTH IN THE EXERCISE OF YOUR HIGH RESPONSIBILITIES.

UNDER YOUR LEADERSHIP MAY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CONTINUE TO FIND IN THEIR IMPRESSIVE RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL HERITAGE THE SPIRITUAL VALUES AND ETHICAL PRINCIPLES NEEDED TO COOPERATE IN THE BUILDING OF A TRULY JUST AND FREE SOCIETY, MARKED BY RESPECT FOR THE DIGNITY, EQUALITY AND RIGHTS OF EACH OF ITS MEMBERS, ESPECIALLY THE POOR, THE OUTCAST AND THOSE WHO HAVE NO VOICE.

AT A TIME WHEN SO MANY OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD YEARN FOR LIBERATION FROM THE SCOURGE OF POVERTY, HUNGER AND VIOLENCE, I PRAY THAT YOU WILL BE CONFIRMED IN YOUR RESOLVE TO PROMOTE UNDERSTANDING, COOPERATION AND PEACE AMONG THE NATIONS, SO THAT ALL MAY SHARE IN THE BANQUET OF LIFE WHICH GOD WILLS TO SET FOR THE WHOLE HUMAN FAMILY (cf. Isaiah 25:6-7). UPON YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, AND UPON ALL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, I WILLINGLY INVOKE THE LORD’S BLESSINGS OF JOY AND PEACE.

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

A Catholic pro-life video with a kick

Check out this well-produced video from a Catholic "lay association of the faithful" that claims 100,000 members. It is a project of the Fidelis Center for Law and Policy. Here's a blurb from their "about us" page:

"CatholicVote.org debuted in 2008 with a 3:30 commercial highlighting the Catholic Vote. The film was the most watched political commercial on the Internet with nearly 4 million views. Traffic to the CatholicVote.com website outpaced sites such as Starbucks.com, United.com and Ford.com during October and November 2008."

Russell Shaw on Father Richard John Neuhaus

OSV contributing editor Russell Shaw writes about the life of Father Richard John Neuhaus in our Jan. 25 issue:

It happens only rarely that a sharp-witted, sharp-penned controversialist has a host of friends. Father Richard John Neuhaus was the exception, and those friends were the measure of the man.
He was an influential editor and author, a familiar figure at the Vatican and the White House, where President George W. Bush called him "Father Richard." But more than anything else, he was a man of God, deeply in love with his Church and his Lord.

Father Neuhaus died Jan. 8 in New York at the age of 72 of complications from cancer. More than most public figures, his passing brought expressions of genuine grief from people who knew him well. Joseph Bottum, poet, essayist and editor of First Things, the monthly ecumenical journal Father Neuhaus founded, spoke for many when he said:
"My tears are not for him -- for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord he trusted.
"I weep, rather, for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of his life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away."
Richard John Neuhaus was born in Pembroke, Ontario, on May 14, 1936, one of eight children. His father was a Lutheran minister, a profession he also followed, becoming pastor of a poor congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, N.Y. He was a naturalized citizen of the United States.
During the 1960s, he was an active participant in the civil-rights and anti-war movements, and was a co-founder of the group Clergy Concerned About Vietnam. But in time his enthusiasm for liberal politics cooled. The decisive event for him, he later said, was the Supreme Court's January 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
He remained an activist all the same, moving in a neoconservative direction, and in 1984 established a "Center for Religion and Society" as part of the conservative Rockford Institute. When that relationship ended in strife, in 1990 he launched First Things and its publishing base, the Institute on Religion and Public Life.
In September 1990, Father Neuhaus entered the Catholic Church. A year later, he was ordained a Catholic priest by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, who, along with Pope John Paul II, was one of his heroes.
He wrote many books setting out his views on religion, politics and social issues. Among the best known were "The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America" (1984), "The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World" (1987) and "Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth" (2006). With the Protestant evangelical leader Charles Colson, he spearheaded efforts aimed at fostering political and social cooperation between Catholics and evangelicals and founded a group called Evangelicals and Catholics Together.
To many of his readers, Father Neuhaus was best known for his monthly First Things column "The Public Square." Writing in a fluid and highly readable style, he shared his thoughts about politics, Church life, his omnivorous reading and much else. In the process he was often insightful and almost never dull.
In a tribute last November written to mark the 90th birthday of his longtime close friend Cardinal Avery Dulles, he noted that it was sometimes said in criticism of the eminent Jesuit theologian -- who was to die just a month later -- "Avery Dulles doesn't do fireworks."
Richard Neuhaus did do fireworks. But even though he could be tart and occasionally controversial, he was consistently generous and never mean-spirited. As with Shakespeare's Falstaff, so also with him, he was not only witty himself but "a cause that wit is in other men."
Writing of death, he once said: "The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well." And living well is something he was good at.

(Photo: firstthings.com)

Should we fight FOCA or is it a phantom?

A number of Catholic commentators in recent weeks have expressed unease and more about the anti-FOCA campaign of pro-life activists. Their view — expressed here in a slightly hyperbolic way by journalist/blogger David Gibson — is that 1) FOCA has no chance of passing 2) Therefore, protesting about it is purely confrontational 3) and prevents any hope of Catholic influence in the new administration of Barack Obama.

It is true there has been a lot of misplaced hysteria about FOCA in some Catholic circles. One anti-FOCA novena that was recently widely circulated on the Internet made, among other errors, the false claim that Obama would sign FOCA on Jan 21 or 22 — a clear impossibility, considering the bill first has to be introduced in Congress and make it through both House and Senate.

But in our Jan. 25 editorial, we argue that even if the FOCA threat seems remote, Catholics have a right —- even a duty — to speak out against bad laws. Read it here.

Single-sex Catholic school trend

Once relegated to the dustbins of educational practice, single-sex schools are making somewhat of a comeback in Catholic education. The trend has the support of some child pyschologists.

We examine the phenomenon in the Jan. 25 issue of the newspaper. Among the main interviewees is Dr. Leonard Sax, one of the country's foremost experts on the subject.

Dr. Leonard Sax didn't have a very supportive response when a patient in his private practice in Maryland told him that her son's academic performance improved when she placed him in an all-boys Catholic school.
"I told her that with all due respect, I regarded single-sex education as an antiquated relic," he told Our Sunday Visitor. "She told me, 'With all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about."
Curious, he visited a similar school and was surprised to see ... Read more.

Pro-lifers anxious over Obama inauguration

OSV contributing editor Russell Shaw has this pre-inauguration analysis in our Jan. 18 issue:

On Jan. 20, one day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and become the first African-American to occupy the office. Great hopes and great anxieties converge upon this profoundly historic occasion.Obama's inaugural address -- drafted by a 27-year-old Holy Cross College graduate named Jon Favreau -- is expected to stick to broad themes expressed in his trademark rhetoric. Specifics will come later, in the State of the Union and budget messages.

But after months of uncertainty, Obama's relationship with moral conservatives may nevertheless be indelibly defined in the earliest days of his presidency. Barring a miracle, it seems unlikely to be a harmonious one. Read
more.

Captive to fame

How much are you affected by the cultural obsession with celebrity? Perhaps more than you think.

U.S. teens certainly are. According to a recent study: “Young girls, by a two-to-one margin, would rather be famous than more beautiful. Those same girls, by a margin of three to one, would rather be a personal assistant to a celebrity than a U.S. senator. More than a quarter of the boys and girls surveyed said they believed fame would make them happier and more loved by their families. Most found the idea of dinner with a celebrity like Paris Hilton, Jennifer Lopez or the rapper 50 Cent more appealing than dinner with Jesus Christ.”

Check out this thought-provoking article — “Fame and misfortune” — by OSV contributing editor Emily Stimpson in our Jan. 11 issue.

And here’s our editorial based on the story. A quote: “Even in the less lucrative Catholic domain, fame tempts egos to justify deviant behavior or tolerate the creation of personality cults.”