Weekly Summary
The week in review, from the perspective of a veteran Catholic journalist
After a bit of a slow start, a lot of activity this week:
• Did you catch the news that Joe Biden has received an advance of about $10 million for his presidential memoirs? It’s hard to believe that the book’s sales could justify that wild investment. But this book is in a special category— call it Prestige Publishing— in which the book is not actually written by the “author” nor is it read by the purchaser. It’s all about prestige, for everyone involved.
• The incidence of vandalism and arson at Catholic churches has soared in recent years, official reports show. Unfortunately— as I explained in a CatholicCulture post— the official reports vastly understate the scope of the problem, because most attacks on Catholic institutions go unreported.
• Tuesday note: Pope Leo’s remarks about the award the Chicago archdiocese planned for Senator Durbin were terribly disappointing. Still, even if you accept what the Pope said about other issues, his comments still led to the conclusion that a pro-abortion legislator should not be honored by the Church.
• In fact that conclusion, drawn from the Pope’s statement, seemed so obvious that I made the same point again.
• Writing again for CatholicCulture, I expanded on that argument to explain why the Pope’s extemporaneous answers to a reporter’s question were “certainly disappointing,” but at the same time “largely irrelevant.” The question at issue was whether Durbin should be honored by the Church. The Pope suggested that maybe other legislators shouldn’t be honored. OK; we can discuss that question later. But should Durbin be honored? By the Pope’s standards, No.
• Although it isn’t in the “prestige publishing” category, my novel Ghost Runner is coming out next month, and I’ve continued the sneak previews on Substack. We’re up to Chapter 5 now, and of course you can catch up with anything you’ve missed.
• Wednesday Note: When Durbin declined the award from the Chicago archdiocese, it had the “look and feel” of a negotiated solution. (Did you notice that the announcement came not from Durbin but from Cupich?)
• Another Wednesday Note: Pope Leo described US immigration policy as “inhuman.” Well, is Vatican immigration policy inhuman as well? How rigorously can a sovereign state enforce its border controls? It’s isn’t entirely clear, is it? This issue is not like abortion.
• Thursday’s Note: Great news from the Lumen Christi Institute, which is now offering recording of lectures given by the late, incomparable Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ. If you haven’t yet discovered this great Catholic thinker, here’s an opportunity.
• Just for fun, I told the story of how an encounter with a friendly English financial planner prompted me to change the familiar slogan about how to prepare for societal breakdown. “Buy gold and guns,” the saying goes. But there’s a good reason to prefer silver and guns. In fact more than one good reason, as I found to my profit. (Caveat: I am not giving investment advice. Anyone tempted to take investment advice from me should quickly turn over all his money to a trusted caretaker.)
• Friday’s Note: Leila was hitting on all cylinders with a ‘miscellany’ post that discussed the people who profited from the Covid lockdown, our need for a plain-speaking Pontiff, and the nonsensical claims made my feminists.
• Continuing the discussion of St. Augustine in my Substack Seminar on Just War, this week I spent some time on a question that I find unsettling: Since St. Augustine does not believe that an individual can be morally justified in using lethal force for self-defense, how does he justify lethal force in warfare, which after all is national defense? Is there something lacking in his theory— or in my understanding?
• Saturday’s Note: Amy Wellborn is right. Popes should not give press conferences. The results are often predictable, and rarely good.
• Finally, on this week’s Home Front podcast, Leila and I discuss:
- The threadbare, tattered “seamless garment” ideology that Cardinal Cupich invoked for the Durbin award.
- The equally threadbare American healthcare system, which is completely dysfunctional after Obamacare (and do Republicans notice?).
- The ways in which federal polices, originally designed to encourage home ownership, have made it more difficult to buy a home, as analyzed by our son Joseph Lawler.