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The New York Times
NYC
First Thing, Muzzle
the Clergy?
By CLYDE HABERMAN,
nytimes.com on the Web, May 2, 2008
Wouldn’t it be nice if, in the name
of ecumenism, certain clergymen could reach an understanding about why 3,000
people died on Sept. 11, 2001? Most New Yorkers probably never thought
that the victims had it coming. But some gentlemen of the cloth seem to
know better.
The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Senator Barack Obama’s former pastor-cum-present
millstone, suggested once again the other day that the United States brought the
pain on itself by engaging in, as he put it, overseas terrorism of its own.
At least he has been consistent. Right after the World Trade Center came
tumbling down like the walls of Jericho, Mr. Wright said that “America’s
chickens are coming home to roost.” If those words have a familiar ring,
it may be because they were used back in 1963 by Malcolm X to describe the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Pat Robertson’s politics are the polar opposite of Mr. Wright’s. But the
right-wing televangelist has had his own take on why the mass deaths at the
trade center and the Pentagon were not undeserved. “Abortionists,”
feminists, gays and lesbians had made God angry, he and the now-dead Rev. Jerry
Falwell agreed two days after the attacks.
Even so, Mr. Robertson bestowed his endorsement for president on former Mayor
Rudolph W. Giuliani, a true sinner in the eyes of some, a supporter of abortion
rights who bunked with a couple of gay men after his second marriage fell apart.
Mr. Giuliani, Mr. 9/11 himself, happily accepted that ultimately
less-than-useful blessing.
(Gay men and lesbians seem to be the cause of many modern plagues. They’re
the reason God sent Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans, or so suggested the
Rev. John C. Hagee, a televangelist who supports Senator John McCain in the
presidential race.)
It is hard for a layperson to sort through the various explanations for
calamities of such magnitude. So the ministers could do everyone a favor
by coming together to hammer out, in a spirit of unity, the theological
underpinnings of Sept. 11. It’s never too late.
More likely, though, it is the politicians who may want to get together, just to
discuss how to rid themselves of what Henry II, were he still around, would no
doubt refer to as these meddlesome priests.
You have to believe that Mr. Obama, his grip on the Democratic nomination
weakened by the rhetorical sabotage he has suffered, would love to give Mr.
Wright a thumping. On the Republican side, Mr. McCain has tried of late to
distance himself from Mr. Hagee, who has been quoted as referring to the Roman
Catholic Church as “the great whore of Babylon.” That’s hefty baggage to
tote if you’re courting votes among America’s 67 million Catholics.
Then this week, practically out of nowhere, it was Mr. Giuliani’s turn to be
discomfited by a clergyman. He suddenly found himself in the canonical
doghouse of the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Edward M. Egan.
Mr. Giuliani’s misdeed, in the cardinal’s view, was to receive holy communion at
the Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI at St. Patrick’s Cathedral two weeks
ago. For years, Cardinal Egan said, “an understanding” existed that Mr.
Giuliani was “not to receive the Eucharist because of his well-known support of
abortion.” The former mayor, he said, should keep his end of the bargain.
The cardinal is widely believed to be near the end of his tenure in New York.
But rather than tiptoe toward the exit, he took a roundhouse punch at the city’s
best-known Catholic political figure. This was more of Cardinal Egan than
New Yorkers are used to seeing. He has rarely shown flashes of the
dynamism and bonhomie of his immediate predecessor, Cardinal John J. O’Connor.
Mr. Giuliani has not reacted publicly to Cardinal Egan’s wrist-slapping, but a
spokeswoman called Mr. Giuliani’s religiosity “a deeply personal matter.”
Not that Mr. Giuliani himself has always been scrupulous about the privacy of
faith. When he was running for a second mayoral term in 1997, he
criticized his opponent, Ruth W. Messinger, for skipping a Columbus Day Mass at
St. Patrick’s — never mind that Ms. Messinger is Jewish. The mayor was
forced into a rare admission of poor judgment.
Reading between the lines, one gets the sense that Mr. Giuliani is miffed at
Cardinal Egan. Maybe he, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should sit down at some
point to talk one another through their troubles with the clergy. An
Italian restaurant is not a bad idea. They could discuss the matter over
bowls of strozzapreti.
Strozzapreti is a type of pasta. In Italy, where anticlerical sentiments
can run high, it means “priest strangler.”
E-mail:
haberman@nytimes.com
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