The Black Friday Crowds, the Church, and the 99%

   Recently, in cities across America, crowds of people have been camping outside in tents within cities, some for multiple nights.  These crowds of people have often become unruly, with a number of them being arrested, with some even being pepper sprayed or tasered.  I'm talking, of course, about the crowds of people who took part in the annual American ritual known as Black Friday.  Did you think I meant something else?
   Black Friday is always one of those moments in American life that many of us tend to look at and shake our heads, but in our current climate, the ritual seemed even more ridiculous if that is at all possible.  With high unemployment, higher underemployment, a slowly improving but still weak economy, and thousands of citizens taking to the street to protest economic injustice as part of the Occupy movement, a day full of rampant materialism and needless purchasing of needless items seemed a little, well, odd.  The Church has acknowledged this as well, responding to these troubling economic times with a reminder of those who are left out of any kind of economic recovery, which once again is the most vulnerable of society.

    Since the Occupy Wall Street movement began a couple months ago and spawned many similar Occupy movements across the United States and really across the Western World, a question that is come up time and again is "what should Catholics' response be to this movement?  Perhaps unsurprisingly, many Catholic news services have criticized or outright rejected the movement.  One guy on EWTN Radio even went as far as to compare them to the Nazis, although I don't recall what he said because I usually tune someone out when they start throwing out Nazi references unless they're actually talking about Nazis.  First off, let me say that the Occupy movement and the Catholic Church are by no means completely on the same page.  Many within the Occupy movement are largely pro-choice and there is even some talk of them receiving donations from pro-choice groups.  There is also some mentions of anti-Semitic statements made by those taking part in the Occupy protests which, although by no means an official message from the Occupy movement and probably taken out of context then out of proportion, is nonetheless troubling by its presence.  With that said, however, the Occupy movement is advocating many of the things that the Catholic Church has been advocating for centuries: a remembrance of the poor, advocating for the vulnerable, and a rejection of an economic system in which the rich get richer by exploiting the poor and vulnerable.

    With this in mind, recently the Church released a document titled  Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority.  The document calls for more Global Authority to regulate markets, along with taxation on financial transactions and further actions to make the market more responsive to the needs of the person as opposed to nations that enjoy a financial advantage.  You can read the full document here:


http://www.zenit.org/article-33718?l=english

    The response to this document has been interesting to say the least.  Criticisms from within Catholic media sources are once again present, but there is one criticism I wish to focus on in particular, the insistence that this is "not an official papal document" and therefore not official.  True this does not carry the same weight as an official papal document as, say, Humanae Vitae and it is also true that Pope Benedict XVI probably did not write a single word in the document.  That does not mean that the document does not hold merit, however.  One would be hard pressed to find anything within the document that is inconsistent with papal teachings throughout the centuries.

   The document also shines the light on what persists to be a very important issue yet also persists to be one that usually gets little or no attention.  One of the oft quoted phrases from the Occupy movement is "we are the 99%," meant to represent that much of the economic power in this country is held by the top 1% while the 99% seem to continue to get a smaller slice of an ever shrinking pie.  This must be kept in perspective however.  Although I am certainly a part of that 99% of the United States populous, in comparison to the rest of the world I am probably in the top 10% and perhaps even in the top 1% of economic power.  I have a car, a roof over my head, a cell phone, a refrigerator full of food, electricity, running water, heating and air conditioning, a television hooked to a satellite, and (obviously) internet access, items that as an American I largely take for granted or perhaps even feel entitled to while most of the world's population would see these items as unattainable luxuries.  So while we are the 99%, we must not forget that there is an even larger 99% who is more vulnerable with even less economic say than those of us within America's 99%.

   So once again we come to Black Friday.  Surely we have all seen the pictures of the overcrowded stores and heard the news stories of some cases in which the crowds were at times unruly.  Catholics Vote had an interesting post this morning where  pictures of the Black Friday madness were contrasted with quotes by Blessed John Paul II.  You can check it out here:

http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=23306

   So how do we, as Catholics or as Christians, respond to the contrast of a nation that has one large crowd protesting economic injustice and another large crowd taking part in an annual ritual of rampant unchecked materialism?  I will not act like I have a simple answer to this question because in truth there is no simple answer.  I would, however, recommend that as Christians and as a Church we look past these crowds and look at each person as an individual.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church criticizes Capitalism in the same section it criticizes Socialism and Communism for a very simple reason.  Pure Capitalism, pure Socialism, and pure Communism all have the same inherent flaw in that they devalue the individual in favor of the society's collective gain and is willing to exploit the populous in order to achieve this gain.  So as a Church we have a duty to support the individual against a society who sees the vulnerable within the world as little more than tools to exploit for one's own gain.  So whether we sleep out in a tent on Wall Street in order to protest economic injustice or we sleep out in a tent in front of Best Buy in order to get great deals on electronics, I hope that as a society we will not forget the vulnerable who continue to suffer due to exploitation yet often have no voice.

Death of a Utopian Salesman

When I was in grad school a professor made an off color remark that spoke volumes.  While discussing technology she said (and this is a paraphrase) “For you poor, inferior souls who don’t use Apple let me explain…”  This statement, although clearly meant in jest, reveals an element of modern American life.  This has become even more relevant in recent days with the passing of Steve Jobs.  Apple, and its loyal customers, represents a utopian thought that has been present in North America since the beginning of the European experience in the Americas.  With the untimely death of its founder and central utopian leader, it will be interesting to see if Apple will go the way of many other American utopias.

                Apple is a utopian cult.  Not a utopia in the sense of the isolated, religiously inspired communities that have dotted the American landscape over the centuries and not a cult as it is understood in post-Branch Davidian popular media, but instead a utopian cult for this modern consumer driven American life.  Much like George Rapp’s commerce inspired rivertown in the early 19^th century, Brigham Young’s western utopia in the mid to late 19^th century, and Jim Jones’ counterculture inspired community in the 1970’s, the Apple utopia is one that reflects modern American life while concurrently claiming to be an escape from the doldrums of everyday life.

                Apple promotes a culture of insiders and outsiders that has been present throughout utopian experiments.  Apple has a market share that usually hovers around 10% of the total personal computer market, which is successful by any business model although it is a distant third behind HP and Dell.[i]  Through its own use of technology and marketing, Apple has taken itself out of the usual PC definition that sees their 10% as outside the usual PC market.  Much of this attitude can be found in the memorable “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” of the previous decade.  The advertising campaign ran for a number of years taking various forms (many of the commercials can still be found on YouTube) and spawned a number of parodies (many of which can also be seen on YouTube).  The long running advertising campaign’s unifying message was simple: Macs were more usable, more versatile, and especially more hip whereas PCs were presented as bumbling and awkward.  Apple has presented an image of a company that is outside of the PC market even though its primary focus is PCs.  Customers have bought into this image.  Macs are now spoken of as differing from personal computers.  Many Apple customers speak of only buying Apple products and some have even taken to putting Apple stickers on their vehicles.  The number of fan sites for Apple dwarfs that of any other PC manufacturer and perhaps any other electronics company.  Indeed, Apple’s marketing efforts have been successful in perpetuating the utopian image of misguided insiders and “in the know” outsiders.

                Any utopian experiment needs a central figure, and Steve Jobs fit that role while concurrently becoming the next in a long line of utopian leaders who reflect modern society.  Much of the coverage in response to his death concentrated on the fact that he was a College dropout who went on to co-found a multinational multibillion dollar corporation[ii] which would seem to perpetuate that Jobs was from humble beginnings but went on to become an American success story.  This story, of course, is common in western Messianic narratives.  The company Jobs co-founded along with Steve Wozniak was, in fact, a modern utopia in modern American society.  Apple was able to exploit two streams that have dominated American culture over the last three decades.  First and foremost is the rise of technology.  Second is consumers’ desire for new personalized products, which drove not only much of Apple’s success in focusing on personal computers, MP3 players, and smartphones but also saw unprecedented growth in housing construction over the last decade. 

Jobs and Apple were able to exploit this desire for newness and personalized products, once again doing so in utopian fashion.   Apple’s product rollouts, which came to be known as “Stevenotes,” took on all the flair and structure of evangelical sermon.  Jobs would create a need then produce the solution for this need: a new product by Apple.  Always dressed in the same clothing of jeans and a black turtleneck and using the same model, often Jobs became just as much of the focus as the new product.   Job’s products often also promised to deem obsolete one or more products that a consumer often owned, even if it were an Apple product.  Therefore Jobs created a disposable religion that saw him deliver thinly veiled sermons about why the customer’s products must be disposed of.

With that in mind, it will be interesting to see how Apple will function now with the death of its most public figure.  Most utopian experiments do not expand far beyond the leadership of its founder and, if not already gone, will often wither away with the death of its founder.  There are some exceptions, however, (the most notable being the Mormons) of utopian experiments expanding and thriving long after its founder’s death.   As a modern utopia, Apple now finds itself in a position where they need to recreate themselves without their founder and leader.  Not necessarily their businesses model but instead its public near religious model which has led to a loyal following of customers.  Now, just to be clear, I am not accusing Apple customers of being cult members and certainly not in the modern sense.  The customers do, however, show a loyal following that has been shown in the outpouring after Steve Jobs’ death.  Will Apple continue to be a thriving corporation or will it become another example of disposable religion after the loss of its leader?  That is left to be seen.

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[i] Eric Slivka, “Apple Soars to Third Place in US with 10.7% Market Share,” http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/13/apple-soars-to-third-place-in-u-s-pc-market-with-10-7-share/ retrieved October 9, 2011

[ii] Allen Deutschman, “Thanks for the Future: How a College Dropout trusted his gut, defied corporate America, and carried us into tomorrow,” http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/09/thanks-for-the-future.html retrieved October 9, 2011

A Memorable Day

Some days are just more memorable than others.  Sometimes, a specific mass is remembered years later.  This Sunday's mass is an example of that for a number of reasons.  On a weekend where the phrase "Never Forget" was uttered countless times, this Sunday is one I will probably never forget, but not for the reasons one might think.

First, obviously, it goes without saying that one's thoughts were not far from what happened ten years ago.  It seems like the memories were everywhere, and even if one didn't wish to think of the events of September 11, 2001 the media would be there for a quick reminder.  I, like so many other people, can remember how the events unfolded throughout that day and really throughout that entire week.  Coincidintally, I had begun attending Catholic mass for the first time a couple weeks earlier and, with the exception of the first mass I attended, the first mass I went to after 9/11 was one of my first memorable moments of a nearly decade long journey that finally led to me coming home to the Catholic Church.  What I remember most from that first post-9/11 mass was an attitude that I didn't find anywhere else at the time.  When the people I encountered, around town, around campus (I was a Freshman in College at the time), and seemingly everyone I saw on TV at the time was promulgating attacking the Middle East with senseless rage, within the walls of the Catholic church I was attending I heard things like "love your enemies," "forgiveness," "peace," "the people who attacked America are not representative of all Muslims and Arabs," etc.  It was the first time I encountered the Church trying to bring sense to a senseless world.  Ten years later, I can think of numerous time when the liturgy, teachings, music, or even the mere existence of the Catholic Church made me realize that things would indeed be alright.  As I'm sure many parishes did today, we recited in unison Pope Benedict's prayer for peace at Ground Zero:
God of peace, bring forth your peace to our violent world:
peace in the hearts of all men and women
and peace among the nations of the earth.
Turn to your way of love
those whose hearts and minds are comsumed with hatred.

God of understanding,
overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy,
we seek your light and guidance
as we confront such terrible events.
Grant those whose lives were spared
may live so that the lives lost
may not have been lost in vain.
Comfort and console us,
strengthen us in hope,
and give us the wisdom and courage
to work tirelessly for a world
where true peace and love reign
among nations in the hearts of all.

Also, today in my parish and many others more steps were taken in anticipation the introduction of the new Roman Missal at the beginning of Advent.  Today was the introduction of new musical settings for the Sanctus, Agnus Dei, etc. and they were sung in mass for the first time.  The settings were, in a word, beautiful.  As they were explained by the day's song leader before the beginning of mass I came to a realization: This is the first time I can remember that any kind of "change" within the Church in its recent history has been without major controversy.  Over the last half century or so, perhaps even longer, nearly every change or new initiative introduced church has been met by widespread derision that the changes are way too much or not enough, too conservative or too liberal, too open or too closed, too "Old Catholic" (historically, not the denomination) or too Protestant, and the list goes on.  The new Missal, however, has been without those widespread  complaints (I'm sure they're out there, just not nearly as widespread).  There are a number of explanations for this.  First, it's no secret that the new Missal settings are beautiful.  With the better translation of the Latin and new musical settings, the overall beauty of the mass has been enhanced.  I think the absence of major controversy, however, speaks to the unifying ability of the mass and the liturgy therein.  Through this liturgy Catholics of all stripes are united in communion.  Something I always enjoy about communion is noticing how diverse the people in front of me and behind me are.  People diverse race, social class, and philosophy line up every day for mass all across the world, and the new Latin Translation of the Missal does a beautiful job of capturing that moment.

A Saint for the cafeteria Catholics, or a Saint for the Conservatives? The Dorothy Day Debate, and what it says about Modern American Catholicism

A fascinating aspect of American culture is our willingness to debate dead people.  To be more specific, the intentions and accomplishments of those public figures that have passed away are a surefire means of starting debate.  The clearest example of this is the debate over the Founding Fathers, which are viewed as pious men who wished to found a Christian nation or as Deists who wished for no religious influence in the new American republic, depending on who one listens to.  Similar debates have taken place over Abraham Lincoln, especially during the wars of the last decade when proponents of war were mentioning Lincoln’s actions that would violate civil liberty laws in most situations while opponents of war noted Lincoln’s quotes and actions to not show malice toward one’s enemy. 

                The latest historical figure to enter this posthumous debate of intentions is Dorothy Day, the political activist and founder of the Catholic Worker Movement.  What is of particular interest recently is that Day, who was not only active in pacifist and worker’s rights movements but, before her conversion to Catholicism, lived a life that included two common law marriages and an abortion.  It is this social activism and especially the abortion that have led many in the popular media to uphold Day, and her possible canonization, as a representation of the church “changing with the times” in that the Church is even considering the canonization of this supposedly marginal or lapsed Catholic.   In a recent article on cnn.com Stephen Prothero, who is a professor of American Religion at Boston University, raised the question of if Catholics could embrace a person as a saint who had committed the “original sin” of contemporary Catholicism.  You can read the article here:

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/07/my-take-catholics-will-accept-a-saint-who-had-an-abortion/comment-page-2/

This question raised by Prothero has a number of issues.  Aside from the obvious fact that the “original sin” of contemporary or any other Catholicism is not abortion but original sin (one would think that a person who holds a PhD. In religion from Harvard would know such a thing), if one were to erase from the list of saints everyone who had ever sinned, then according to Catholic beliefs the only saint remaining would be the Virgin Mary.   Of course Dorothy Day was a sinner.  Her story is not unlike St. Augustine, who lived a similarly promiscuous life before his conversion to Catholic Christianity (Prothero even mentions this in his article).  What is more telling is not that Dorothy Day had an abortion but her reaction to the abortion after her conversion to Catholicism.  In a 1974 Day identified birth control and abortion as genocide similar to that which happened during the Holocaust.  This is a statement that even many of the most conservative Catholics would shy away from.

                Stephen Prothero’s troubling question has an even more troubling answer.  He feels that American Catholics would embrace Dorothy Day as a saint, not because of her actions as a Servant of God (as the Catholic Church recognizes her as being) but because of poll data that shows that a majority of American Catholics to not fully agree with the Church’s teaching on abortion.  Prothero calls this “diverging from the party line,” a statement that belittles the Catholic Church’s teaching on life issues into a political platform.  If it were such then the platform would likely be altered at the whims of polling data, but the Catholic Church’s teachings aren’t  decided by polls and one isn’t elected a saint (once again, a guy with a PhD. from Harvard should know this).  This argument also ignores the fact that many people who have had abortions or who were initially pro-choice advocates such as Norma McCorvey of the Roe v. Wade case have gone on to become pro-life advocates who are likewise embraced by Catholic pro-life advocates.   Anyway this argument makes no sense.  If, according to Prothero, a majority of American Catholics see little or no issue with abortion and feel it should be legal in most if not all cases, then why would they embrace a saint who saw abortion and birth control as genocide?

                On the other side of the coin, Phil Lawler of CatholicCulture.org wrote a rebuttal of sorts to Prothero’s article.  You can read it here:

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=817

Lawler’s article largely concentrates on sin, but then said that Dorothy Day would agree with the Church’s opposition on homosexual acts.  Now, I haven’t seen every single thing that Dorothy Day has written or said but I have never seen anything where she openly opposed homosexual acts in the strong manner that she condemned abortion and birth control.  She may have made such a statement (if you know of one please send it to me, with citation) and I don’t doubt that her stance on homosexual acts is that different from the Church’s, but I have never seen anything that would make Day’s stance similar to that of a modern conservative anti-gay marriage activist.

                There is one thing strangely absent from Lawler’s article, however.  While Lawler acknowledges that Dorothy Day was a controversial figure throughout her life and he correctly identifies her as one who “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable,” he does not say why Day was so controversial.  While he acknowledges her as a fiery pacifist and an advocate for the poor, how fiery she was and who among the poor she was advocating is omitted.  Day was an early and unwaveringly vehement opponent of the Vietnam War, so much so that counterculture leader Abbie Hoffman went as far as to call Day the “first hippie.”   Her advocacy for the poor is, of course, best represented in her founding of the communal living-style Catholic Worker movement.  Therefore while Day was pro-life, her most public work would have been in direct opposition to the worldview of modern American conservatism.

                So if Dorothy Day isn’t one who can be embraced by lapsed or cafeteria Catholics or politically conservative American Catholics, then who can embrace her example and work on Earth?  The answer, in short, is Catholics.  Catholics of all stripes.   Catholics who are lapsed and Catholics who attend daily mass.   Catholics who are Democrat, Republican, and everything in between.   Dorothy Day’s example is one with widespread appeal, and her tireless work as an advocate for the workers, pacifism, and the unborn shows that she was not interested in appeasing any one side, so therefore all of us Catholics and really all of us Christians in our modern American lives can look to Dorothy Day and wonder what is truly lacking in our own lives.

                The debate over the posthumous legacy of Dorothy Day will continue as the question of her sainthood is discussed, a process that will likely be decades considering her case is in the very early stages and she has yet to even be beatified.  As this debate goes on there will undoubtedly be further molding of Day’s legacy to fit one’s own platform.  I must say that I might be guilty of this as well, as I see myself as a Catholic who is pro-life but economically Liberal and I like to view Dorothy Day as much in the same fashion.  What does stand in opposition to this posthumous legacy debate, however, is the process for canonization in and of itself, ironically because of what happens after one who is being reviewed for canonization has passed away.  There will be the need for confirmed miracles attested to Dorothy Day (Lawler mentions this in his article, Prothero does not, although I presume he knows it, since, you know, he has a PhD. from Harvard).  If this happens and Dorothy Day is elevated to sainthood, then she will be a saint that all can celebrate and venerate.  While Day’s legacy can be debated and altered, what will stand the test of time is her work as a servant of God.

John Corapi: A Sheepdog without a Flock

                John Corapi was, up until recently, perhaps the closest thing to an evangelical style TV preacher in American Catholicism.  He was part of a Catholic order (Society of Our Lady of the Trinity) but lived in a large expensive home rather than live with his brothers.  He traveled the country speaking at different conferences and retreats that were regularly shown on EWTN.  His website included CDs, DVDs, books, and recordings of his Sunday homilies that were all available for a price.  He had quite a following with his engaging personal story, dynamic speaking voice, and willingness to make outlandish and sometimes controversial statements while wearing the collar.

                This, of course all came crashing down in a very public manner with allegations of sexual misconduct and with a former employee as well as drug addiction and John Corapi’s decision to leave the priesthood, although he intends to continue with his speaking engagements.  The allegations have led to many of these speaking engagements to be cancelled and EWTN has ceased airing his program.  While this might be seen as an overreaction to allegations that are as of now unproven, Corapi’s conduct in light of these allegations has not helped matters.  It was his decision to leave the priesthood rather than face disciplinary action by the church.   It was also his decision to publicly denounce such disciplinary actions by the church as “violations of his human and legal rights.”

                All of this reeks of an “I’m the victim here” attitude persisted by John Corapi.  Now, I’m not going to presume guilt or innocence on the part of the allegations against Corapi, but his actions in light of these allegations are reprehensible.  While he argues that he cannot get a fair trial and that the Church he claims to love and defend has in effect thrown him under the bus, what he seems to ignore that it was the Church that first pulled him out of the doldrums of drug addiction (namely his mother sending him a prayer card) and it was the Church that ordained him and thus gave him the ability to make a fortune as religious speaker who had the authority of the collar.  The perfect example of this “I’m the victim” attitude is the title of John Corapi is the title of his new website and his upcoming autobiography:  The Black Sheepdog.  This self-given title is meant to combine Black Sheep and Sheep dog and undoubtedly shows that Corapi wishes to convey an image of himself as one who is rejected but still stubbornly watches the flock.  Corapi’s blog is an exercise of self-promotion and he has even taken up addressing himself as “The Black Sheepdog” in the third person, all the while maintaining his innocence and making the allegations against him out to be a kind of witch hunt.

                There are some glaring issues of Corapi’s  new self-styled image of a Black Sheepdog.  First: Sheepdogs are protectors by nature, and a protector must be one whose first interest is whomever or whatever he/she/they is/are protecting and not in perpetuating one’s own image as a protector.  Corapi, who styled this image himself of a Black Sheepdog and his actions in light of the allegations against him show that he is more interested in being perceived as a protector to those who would attack the Church then actually protecting such threats.  With this in mind, one has to wonder who Corapi truly is interesting in protecting and what the “Church” is that he wishes to protect.  The natural answer, and one that John Corapi probably wishes to convey is that this up until recently priest from the S.O.L.T. order wishes to protect the Catholic Church, but at the same time he is critical of the actions in which the Church has taken against him.  In some of these criticisms Corapi has said things that could just as easily be coming out of the mouth of a Conservative Evangelical preacher who sees Catholics as “unsaved” and the Church as the “whore of Babylon.”  Once again such statements are made in light of the allegations against him, as Corapi claims he is a victim of a Church “running scared” in light of the sexual abuse scandals and attacking the character of his accuser as a “troubled woman.”  If John Corapi is interested in protecting anything, it is his image as a protector.

                Second: A Sheepdog needs a flock.  Quite frankly, John Corapi doesn’t have one.  This is due not to his leaving of the public ministry (although that plays part in it) but instead because of his interest in promoting the person of John Corapi rather than make any kind of positive contribution to the Church.  John Corapi is indeed a sheepdog without a flock and it is of his own choosing.

                I began this piece by calling John Corapi a type of TV preacher in American Catholicism, and it would seem to be no accident that the incident that led to his resigning from public ministry is similar to that that have led to the downfall of many TV preachers.  It perhaps can be said that these people of strong personality who use religion as a means of self-promotion are doomed to have such a fall, as their personalities will lead many of them to see themselves as invincible.  What makes these people different from other celebrities who use other fields for their own personal gain is that it can cause the laypeople in which John Corapi and others claim to wish to protect are put into further danger than before.  Not to mention that many of these actions go against the very nature of the Church and principles in which Corapi and others claim they wish to promote.  John Corapi, a man who lives in a mansion and has taken to criticizing the church any chance he gets, would be hard pressed to prove how he is keeping the vows of poverty, obedience, and, if the allegations against him are true, chastity.  Most importantly, Corapi’s self-promotion is detrimental to the Church in which he claims to wish to support.  It shows that his main interest is in using the Catholic Church as a tool to give him a stage for his own gain. Instead of being a protector, outcast or not, John Corapi is merely one who is attempting to use the church by concurrently criticizing the Church while claiming to support it. This attitude, along with his own dynamic personality, has led to Corapi making a fortune but is also detrimental to the Church he wishes to support.  So while Corapi claims to be a Sheepdog protecting the flock, it can be said that Corapi’s actions are more like that of a show dog drawing attention to himself.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog on Current Events and Religion in American life.  I realize there's the old adage to "never discuss religion or politics," but on this blog there will be a lot of discussion on both.   As a Catholic who is pro life but also Democrat as well as an expert on American Religious History who holds degrees in Religion and Political Science, I have keen interest on the current religious happenings in the United States as well as a unique perspective.  I invite anyone to the discussion and/or to raise issues of interest of your own, but I ask for you to keep it civil.

A quick note on the title of the blog: St. Brendan was one of my favorite Irish Saints with the legends of his sailing the seas and the adventures therein.  As one of Irish descent I just decided to have a little fun with the title.  Hopefully it will set a tone for the blog where although I'll be handling heady issues I'll be doing so in a positive and civil manner.  I ask you to do the same.  After all, we're all in the same boat.