Review by Rex Bradshaw at First Things,
"In a new translation of this and San Juan’s other poems, poets María Baranda and Paul Hoover have prioritized fidelity to the original language, with Spanish on the facing page. ...
"This translation fares well by comparison to previous efforts. Despite making no attempt to reproduce San Juan’s rhyme scheme, it falls pleasantly on the ear while taking fewer liberties than most."
Ten years ago, the third-coldest NFL championship game inspired Avery Cardinal Dulles to write, later published at First Things.
Blase Cupich wants Catholics to grow up. Cardinal archbishop of a city famous for the husky, brawling laughter of youth, he preaches the virtues of “mature, well-integrated adult spirituality.” Witness to a man who said “Let the little children come unto me,” he endeavors “to renew the life of the Church by getting people to act like adults.”continue at First Things
No matter what problem Cupich encounters, his solution is to tell people to be more mature. How can we fix immigration? “We all have to act like adults.” What about ending abortion? It must be done “in a constructive way and as adults who respect each other.” And what was Amoris Laetitia about, anyway? Ah, yes: “moving out of an adolescent spirituality into an adult spirituality.”
Common to all these remarks is a refusal of responsibility. Some people have a quaint idea that a bishop should say what is right and wrong, in season and out, but Cupich has evolved beyond this. Cupich wants to liberate Catholic consciences from clerical control. “If people come to a decision in good conscience,” he says, “our job is to help them move forward and to respect that.” If you’re okay, so is he.
COMMENTARY: The essay’s rhetoric of ‘inclusion’ and accusations of ‘fundamentalism’ immediately taint it with an aggressive cultural progressivism.continue at National Catholic Register
I was surprised by a recent piece of extended commentary in La Civiltà Cattolica, the Jesuit newspaper that functions as a quasi-official mouthpiece for the Vatican.
Written by the editor-in-chief, Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, and Argentinean edition editor Rev. Marcelo Figueroa, “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism in the USA: A surprising ecumenism” is a collection of uninformed assertions spiced with malice. It argues that Protestant and Catholic support for American conservatism amounts to an “ecumenism of hate.”
It’s hard to take this seriously. Father Spadaro and Figueroa seem to know very little about the history of religion and politics in the United States. For instance, they say “religion has had a more incisive role in the electoral process and government decisions over recent decades, especially in some U.S. governments.” This is wrong. The great reform movements in our history — abolition, prohibition and Civil Rights — have been motivated and articulated in explicitly Christian terms. Princes of the Church, such as Cardinals Mundelein and Spellman, were frequent guests at Franklin Roosevelt’s White House.
