Right wing Roman Catholics mourn the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

As a practicing Roman Catholic, my opinion (for what it is worth)  about Pope Benedict  XVI, is that he was a human being who exemplified tremendous integrity.  He knew the Catholic Church desperately needed sweeping changes for multiples of reasons.  Unfortunately, Pope Benedict XVI,  was just not strong enough to be a leader for the moment.

Instead of leading, Pope Benedict XVI became another kind of spiritual leader. Pope Benedict was not a reformer, but he led a spiritually conservative cause for traditional Roman Catholics that desperately yearn to protect the faith from the influences of  moral relativism. 

Echo essay from The Guardian, published in the Effingham Daily News, an Illinois newspaper.

Pope Benedict XVI (b.1927- d. 2022)  

Although the Catholic Church is contemplating its future direction, it would be a mistake to view (Pope Benedict XVI’s) death at the age of 95 as anything other than a significant moment. (Read Pope Benedict XVI's obituary at this link here.) 

Though the notion of “two popes” worked better as the title of a film than as a true description of Vatican reality, the politics of Benedict’s retirement have undoubtedly been fraught and faced with challenges.

As Pope emeritus, Benedict XVI became a rallying point for opposition to attempts by his successor, Pope Francis, to move beyond his traditionalist legacy. 

Frankly, Benedict’s failure to properly address the sex abuse scandals that continue to overwhelm the church during and after his pontificate are well chronicled. But the context of that reluctance to engage was a kind of siege mentality which he embodied – first as Pope John Paul II’s ideological enforcer (earning him the nickname “God’s rottweiler”), and then as Pope. 

Benedict’s defensive response to western secularization viewed battening down the hatches of orthodoxy – and closing ranks within the church hierarchy – as the best antidote to the perceived relativism of the age.

Amid corruption scandals, outrage over clerical sexual abuse, and a gulf between church doctrine and the everyday experience of many ordinary Catholics, this approach served neither the church nor the world well. But it remains entrenched in parts of the Vatican. 

As Pope Francis – who himself intends to stand down if his health deteriorates significantly – seeks to implement a very different vision, the coming year will be crucial.

Pope Francis presides during the funeral for Pope Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022)

In 2021, the pope launched the awkwardly named “synod on synodality” – the biggest consultation of global Catholic opinion ever undertaken by the church. This is Francis’s flagship attempt to return to the open, participative spirit of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which concluded that church stances could and should be open to change in light of “the signs of the times”. In October, the first summary of the synodal process’s findings suggested that congregations around the world long to revive that ethos.

Collated responses from millions of Catholics record a widespread desire for an agenda of “radical inclusion”. This encompasses equality for women within the church, greater focus on the plight of poor and marginalized groups such as migrants, a welcoming approach to LGBTQ Catholics, and an overhaul on church governance in relation to sexual abuse. It is an outline of a progressive Catholicism that can build bridges with secular society, instead of taking pride in keeping a distance in the name of doctrinal purity.

The Catholic church is not a democracy, and the final outcome of the synod is likely to be less radical than many participants would hope. But in an era in which Christian identity – and Benedict’s traditionalism – have been weaponized by the radical right, a reform program with its roots in the laity would have welcome ramifications beyond the pews. Pope Francis’s listening exercise can let the winds of change finally blow through the Catholic Church, a global institution in need of renewal.

Published in The Guardian

A physician writes a tribute to nursing

Echo opinion column published in The Effingham Daily News, in Effingham Illinois by columnist Nash Naam:

It was my first day of my new rotation as a junior resident at St. Louis University hospital’s cardiac surgery unit. 

Our hospital, in the early 1980s, was one of only two hospitals in St. Louis that performed open heart surgery, which was still in its infancy. That day, our unit performed 10 open heart surgeries in addition to the 11 that were performed the day before. And on that first day, I was also on call in the Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit.

After finishing the evening rounds, everyone went home, leaving me in the ICU to take care of 21 open heart surgery patients. 

I was petrified! That was shortly after coming from Egypt, where my training was in orthopedic surgery – which is a world apart from open heart surgery.

I stood in the ICU facing a cluster of 21 monitors with their flashy colorful rendition of each patient’s vital signs, cardiac output, pulmonary pressure, and hundreds of other pieces of information. Almost everything on the monitors was hieroglyphic to me. I did not know what to do. My chief resident had told me to call him if I had any questions. But standing there, I had a million questions. And if I called to tell him that, it meant the termination of my residency.

As I was lost in my deep thinking, paralyzed by fear and apprehension, I felt a light gentle touch on my shoulder. I turned and looked to find one of the nurses, Nurse Anderson, with a reassuring smile. It appeared that she, somehow, felt my anxiety and with that beautiful and reassuring smile she erased most of that anxiety.

She said in a soft voice: “Don’t worry! I will go over every patient with you.”

She went with me over every patient in the ICU, explaining and deciphering the information about them. She also told me what each attending surgeon required of his/her patients. Some would like to be called if a patient had 20 cc of drainage in the chest tubes while others did not want to be bothered before at least 200cc. She taught me in a couple of hours more than I had learned in months.

I did not sleep that night. I was mesmerized watching Nurse Anderson flying from room to room like a butterfly, touching, whispering, and reassuring every patient. Her light touch, her reassuring smile, and her soft soothing voice doing wonders for those critically ill patients. And I realized then that I was watching the perfect demonstration of what nursing was all about, competence, knowledge, smiles, dedication, care, touch, and compassion.

I have always had a deep respect for the nurses I worked with, but with Nurse Anderson, exemplifying the best in the nursing profession, my deep respect and appreciation for nurses grew a million folds. And that was reflected in the way I opened myself to learn more from nurses and the deep respect and admiration by which I treated them. In less than nine months at that hospital I was awarded the “Nurses Award to the Best House Officer.” That award had never been given to any surgery resident since those residents are known for being “full of themselves”.

Through my career I have worked with hundreds, if not thousands, of nurses. I have the utmost respect, admiration, and reverences for all of them.

Here in our community, I have been privileged to work with wonderful nurses at St. Anthony’s Memorial Hospital, Effingham Surgery Center, Sarah Bush Lincoln Hospital and at our office. I can’t say enough about how those nurses served their patients and their profession with integrity, dedication, hard work, selflessness, and total commitment to their mission. I have learned to listen to the nurses, and I have never regretted that. They have a deep insight on how each patient’s needs are unique and different and how to approach each patient with an individual adaptation that suits that particular patient.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated to all of us how valuable and precious our nurses are. Everywhere in the country and the world, nurses were the ones who stayed with their COVID patients. They knew the risk, but they took that risk in order to serve their patients. They put their lives on the line to protect, comfort and support their patients. There is no other profession that even comes close to that level of dedication, sacrifice and commitment.

According to Gallup poll and for an impressive 20 years running, nursing was rated as the most trusted profession once again in 2021. This reflects the public’s trust in nurses. But for someone who works closely with many nurses in different locations, I would venture to say that it is really a privilege to work with such dedicated, compassionate, selfless, and caring professionals.

We are all lucky to have those angels taking care of us.

A big thank you to all those angels walking among us, spreading rays of sunshine and illuminating our lives in times of great need. They are not only Angles of Mercy, but also angels of hope and angels of love. And with their warm encouraging smiles, soft reassuring whispers and selfless devotion they infuse in our lives a great deal of hope, beauty, and light.

And before I forget, a very special thank you to Nurse Anderson!

Strategists do not want to call World War Three what it is!

Illinois- Effingham Daily News echo opinion

Vladimir Putin is violating International Law ... no different than Adolf Hitler. Hundreds of innocent people are being killed every day with illegal weapons by the Russians.

Czar envy: Putin looking at tsarist-era weapons of liberation.

I applaud the actions taken to date, but it is not enough. We need to stop buying Russian oil. We also need to join with our allies to put in place a no fly zone. And if that is not effective then we need to commit military assets.
Yes, stopping the purchase of Russian oil will increase our cost of living. But is it cheaper to experience higher prices today or experience the costs of war and the cost of American lives tomorrow?

I was watching the World Wars three-part series on the History Channel and cannot believe the similarity between today and the Nazi rise to power. Putin is Hitler. But the question now is Biden our Churchill or is he our Chamberlain? And is the U.S. and NATO today walking down the same path Europe took prior to World War II?  Action is the lesser of two evils. Let’s save civilization by action today and not repeat history. (IMO: World War Three began in Syria.)

History taught us, that the world could have stopped Hitler, but did not do so, ... and today we can stop Putin!

Write or call your elected representatives today to urge they take action now!

Darrell Dunteman, Bushnell, IL

(I grew up near Shumway.)

Vladimir Putin: the 21st century evidence of reincarnation of Adolf Hitler?

And this....from The New York Times:

Ilya Matveev is the Russian political scientist who recently described the impact of the West’s sanctions on his country as “30 years of economic development thrown into the bin.”

Matveev is not exaggerating. Economists expect the Russian economy to contract by at least 15 percent of G.D.P. this year. Inflation is spiking. An exodus of Russian professionals is underway. Stories of shortages and long lines for basic consumer goods abound.

The U.S. and its allies have turned to sanctions as a way of taking action against Russia’s atrocities without direct military intervention. But to describe these sanctions as anything short of all-out economic warfare is euphemistic. Measures like these might be cloaked in the technocratic language of finance and economics, but the immiseration they cause is anything but abstract.

Nicholas Mulder is a historian at Cornell University and the author of the terrifyingly relevant new book “The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War.”

In it, Mulder focuses on the last time economic warfare was waged at the scale we’re witnessing today, the period between World War I and World War II. And the book’s central lesson is this: We ultimately don’t know what’s going to happen when sanctions of this magnitude collide with the ideologies, myths and political dynamics of a given country. They could persuade the targeted country to back down. But they could also make it so desperate that it becomes more aggressive or lashes out — as Germany and Japan did on the eve of World War II.

So this is a discussion about what kind of weapon sanctions are, whether they actually achieve their goals and how they might shape the future of the Russia-Ukraine conflict (IMO: aka "war") — and the world. We also explore how sanctions “weaponize inflation,” whether they could lead to Vladimir Putin’s downfall in Russia, the toll they have taken on the Russian economy, how the West can leverage its sanctions to help bring about an end to the war in Ukraine, whether a European energy embargo could backfire, how this economic war is destabilizing countries around the world, the humanitarian crisis U.S. sanctions are helping create in Afghanistan, and what a foreign policy that didn’t rely so heavily on sanctions could look like.

This episode is guest hosted by Rogé Karma, the staff editor for “The Ezra Klein Show.” Rogé has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. He works closely with Ezra on everything related to the show, from editing to interview prep to guest selection. 

Listen to the whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.

(A full transcript of the episode is available here.)

Maine Writer postscript- Ukrainians are fighting for all of Europe and World War Three began in 2015, when Vladimir Putin ordered Russia to intervene and invade in Syria.