Dead Air

Let’s spread the good cheer around.

Last Friday the tv network nbc was flailing to sell the last eight or so open ads for the Big Game. (Though they were insisting with a strong pr effort that there was no problem.) The commercial spots are too full for a PSA, it seems. Rumor has it that the remaining ads are priced to sell–which might guarantee next year’s sponsors wait a good bit of time to see if the next broadcaster panics and chops the $3M per ad price way down.

Honestly, these people are more hilarious that the political pro-life movement. The only thing that saved nbc’s bacon on this event is that they lined up advertisers months ago before the smoke blew away and the morrors broke. I wonder how cbs will fare with next year’s game. Do they try to lock in corporations now, or do they cross their fingers and hope for an economic miracle by summertime?

I would like to see the Cards win if for no other reason than seeing the post-game dialogue:

“Kurt Warner, you’ve just won the Super Bowl. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Life: imagine the potential!”

 

New Yankee Rectory?

MLB pitcher and author Jim Bouton is disappointed about the new Yankee Stadium. I like his metaphor. I may be a Yankee-hater, but I like the metaphor:

(I)t’s like tearing down St. Patrick’s Cathedral and building a new one across the street because you are going to get a nicer rectory out of it.

Shh. Don’t tell the bishops, eh?

$1.3 bil for fewer seats, but more luxury.

 

Cyclone Hockey

Home from our first ISU sporting event. We enjoyed watching the men’s hockey team take out Mizzou 6-2 in the home opener. Brit was conflicted, saying the teams were from the two states she’s lived in. Who would she root for? Sort of both.

For ISU, ice hockey is a club team, meaning they’re not under the umbrella of a big-time athletic department. The venue was chilly and decent. It seats about a thousand on one side of the ice surface. I’d say the stands were about half-full of fairly enthusiastic students and a minority of older and younger townies.

The level of play was about one step below the USHL, where I’d seen many, many games in the late 90′s, especially in Waterloo. The Cyclones had one defenseman who had played in the USHL. Their roster included players from eleven states and four Canadian provinces. Neither team seemed really crisp, and Mizzou had a four-goal-in-five-minute meltdown in the second period that essentially decided the game.

I’ll go back for a few more ISU games this season. But we have a lot of choices in the Iowa neighborhood.

Meanwhile, Brit has her sights set on catching the women’s soccer team play next Friday. Naturally, the opponent is Missouri.

 

NFL Prognosticating

Taking a stab at the NFL’s final records this season:

 

New England 13-3, Buffalo 9-7, NY Jets 8-8, Miami 4-12

Pittsburgh 12-4, Cleveland 9-7, Cincinnati 7-9, Baltimore 5-11

Jacksonville 11-5, Indianapolis 10-6, Houston 9-7, Tennessee 5-11

San Diego 10-6, Oakland 9-7, Denver 8-8, Kansas City 3-13

 

Dallas 12-4, NY Giants 8-8, Philadelphia 7-9, Washington 4-12

Minnesota 11-5, Detroit 9-7, Green Bay 6-10, Chicago 5-11

New Orleans 10-6, Tampa Bay 10-6, Carolina 10-6, Atlanta 3-13

Arizona 10-6, San Francisco 9-7, Seattle 6-10, St Louis 4-12

 

Check back in 17 weeks.

 

Cyclones And More On Ice

It appears I have moved to a hockey town. Unlike five of my six years in Kansas City, I have a local hockey team to support. Excellent! The ice arena is within walking distance of my home. Sweet!

When I was at the bank opening up a checking account last month, I saw some advertising copy for the hockey team’s program. That perked my interest. Of course, I would have moved here anyway. Brittany is pleased to see KU and Mizzou on the 08-09 schedule. Her young KC friends split pretty evenly between following those schools. She will be for Iowa State through and through.

Image Credit, above: Jordan Miller & Iowa State Daily web site.

My hometown team makes an annual appearance in Des Moines each year, so I’ll mark that date on my calendar when the AHL schedule is out later today.

One of my adopted teams is also nearby, and I hope to drive up US 20 for a game or two this season as well.

 

Blue Royals

It took me almost six years to warm up to any of the KC teams. But I was getting excited about the Royals, especially when they hired the new manager Trey Hillman and were courting Torii Hunter in the off-season.

Another loss today, their 14th of 50 games in which they’ve scored zero runs or one. The Royals are a decent 21-15 when scoring two or more runs. I suppose things could be worse. If they had gone 0-6 against the Tigers instead of 6-0 (sorry, Dale) Detroit would have the division lead and KC would have the worst record in baseball.

Today was another amazing day for them. They got ten hits, but plated only one run.

 

“We just look like dead”

For my Michigan friends* how does it feel to be elevated to the ranks of Yankee-hate-hood for your ball team’s bloated payroll? How sweet, even for just four days! With my luck I’ll end up relocating to a city without baseball and hockey.

Jim Leyland lays it out for us:

We stunk. We look like we’re just going up there and giving at-bats away without any purpose. The manager’s responsible for the preparation and the performance of the club, and right now, we don’t look very prepared.

We just look like dead.

Now we get to see how the bottom of the Royals’ rotation can pitch. I wonder if Trey is considering a four-starter system?

* It’s not you fans, really; it could’ve happened to anybody.

 

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

If the media is reporting it here, and here, can it be true? CNS News Hub finds the error.

I don’t even follow the team, but I know the Nats are on the road the week the pope is in the country. Nice that some journalist once noted that the April 17th Mass will be at the ballpark. But somehow that fact got reconstituted as a papal trip to see the team in action.

When do you think was the last time a sitting pope saw a professional or major sporting event in person? JPII in the 1980′s taking in a soccer game? Pope John XXIII at the Rome Olympics? Anybody intrepid enough to find a link verifying something like this?

 

Clarification

St Mary’s Academy, recently in the news for pulling the plug on a woman referee for a boys’ basketball game, sets the record straight with a press release:

It was falsely alleged and widely reported that the decision of St. Mary’s Academy not to allow a woman referee to officiate at a basketball game was based upon the idea that women can never have authority over men. This alleged reason was neither stated nor is it held by any official of St. Mary’s Academy, as evidenced by the fact that the faculty and staff of St. Mary’s includes many honorable ladies of talent and erudition. Logically, St. Mary’s Academy, a Catholic institution, adheres in spirit and discipline to Divine Law. The Fourth Commandment obliges due honor to father and mother, as well as to all authority.

St. Mary’s Academy follows the directives of the Catholic Church regarding co-education. The Church has always promoted the ideal of forming and educating boys and girls separately during the adolescent years, especially in physical education (Cf. Divini Illius Magistri – Encyclical on the Christian Education of Youth, by Pope Pius XI, 1929 and The Instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Religious on Co-Education, A.A.S., 25 (1958) pp. 99-103). This formation of adolescent boys is best accomplished by male role models, as the formation of girls is best accomplished by women. Hence in boys’ athletic competitions, it is important that the various role models (coaches and referees) be men.

In addition, our school aims to instill in our boys the proper respect for women and girls. Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we cannot place them in an aggressive athletic competition where they are forced to play inhibited by their concern about running into a female referee.

Rev. Fr. Vicente A. Griego
Headmaster, St. Mary’s Academy

A couple of things:

It took long enough. The accusations of misogyny, sexism, and all would have been dampened if school leadership was more forthcoming. When leaders are silent, all sorts of questions pop up.

Father Griego doesn’t say that girls cannot be refereed or coached by men. That would be a consistent policy if it were followed.

While I can appreciate his “additional” reason, it presumes some kind of incompetence in a woman referee potentially getting in the way. More often, one sees basketball players colliding with cheerleaders or members of the press than with referees.

Tip from Kansas City Catholic.

 

“Dumbfounded”

A nearby SSPX school gets some bad press for refusing to allow a woman to referee a basketball game.

Before the game started, a school administrator approached Campbell’s officiating partner, Darin Putthoff of Topeka, and told him a woman could not serve as referee.

That would be putting a woman in a position of authority over boys, he was told — a scenario that was contrary to beliefs at St. Mary’s Academy.

“I was upset,” Putthoff said. “So I said, ‘You’re telling me you don’t have any teachers at the school who are women?’”

It is true that St. Mary’s Academy does have women teaching boys.  Clearly the arena of sport is not one of the acceptable areas for males and females to mix.

I’m not sure how to comment on this. You have an obvious inculturation issue … on both sides. Schismatic teens will soon be living in a culture that no longer honors the value of women not being involved in sport. As young adults, will they walk off the athletic field if their college or company team is being refereed by someone of the opposite gender?

I do feel a thin slice of sympathy, as I would for Muslims or the Amish attempting to live their values in a predominantly Western culture. But what probably sinks my opinion of St Mary’s would be their hypocrisy in putting women teachers “over” male students in the school setting. Sport is optional, but education is much higher on the priority list–as it should be. I’d get that thin slice back if the teachers were segregated, too. As it is, I think it skirts the boundary of misogyny.

 

Playing/Praying Not To Lose

In athletics, often there is cited a danger for players and coaches playing not to lose. That’s distinct from people who play to win.

In football, one sees this embodied in the combination of the two-minute drill and the prevent defense. For the former, a team trailing and needing to score, alters their planning rhythm. They hurry up; time’s almost run out in the game. So they need to score and if they make an error, the game would be lost anyway.

The defending team will play soft sometimes. They will prevent the other team from going ahead on one big play, but they will gladly bend, giving up intermediate yardage bit by bit. Sometimes that strategy backfires as the trailing team retains patience, and will gladly take whatever the “prevent defense” gives them.

When I was reading the dangers cited for Communion in the hand: easier for non-Catholics to receive, easier for consecrated hosts to be carried off, etc., I was thinking this is part of the mindset of playing (or worshipping) not to lose.

Outside of the circle of the initiated (however one wishes to define that) there is always a danger of sacrilege, abuse, irreverence, taking things less seriously, and the like. There was such concern about this at the Council of Trent that a serious proposal was surfaced to just have the celebration of Mass privately: no congregation, just the clergy.

The better one does liturgy, meaning with great music, preaching, art, architecture, various ministries, full participation, and all, the more likely liturgy will inspire people on the earthly plane and this lead them to the spiritual. Yet there are dangers involved. Musicians can get full of themselves, good preachers play entertainer-priest, liturgical ministers develop their own cults of exclusion or aristocracy, and people get duped into thinking the externals are the essentials, rather than the means to an end.

Like football teams defending a slim lead in the final seconds, it is tempting to play not to lose. And in so doing, such teams might find themselves suffering a catastrophic loss.

The metaphor fits some of the liturgical struggles of the Church today. Programming traditional music only, building in traditional styles only, and limiting mistakes or potential sacrilege–this exemplifies the mentality of praying not to lose. After all, what if God hates David Haas, and we did all that music? Safer to stick with Dufay or de Victoria or plainsong.

I wouldn’t expect all clerical-focused Catholics to understand the benefit of Communion in the hand. Despite the equal dignity of tongue and hand, there is a great value in mature Catholics receiving in the hand if they wish. It’s the way adults serve and feed. To me, the question comes down to this: do clergy want a Church of adults fulfilling their mission, or do they want to reinforce a Church of children and babies waiting to be serviced?

The yearning for some idealized good-ol-days drives some of this backtracking on liturgical reform. My sense is to respond simply, “No thanks. We don’t need to go back.”

Or in the parlance of today, sometimes it’s better to call a blitz, and expect the team to deliver a crushing sack to take the two-minute drillers out of field goal range.

 

Coach Speaks Out

Has this thing with Archbishop Burke going after a basketball coach hit the blogosphere yet? I haven’t been paying attention this week. Coach quote:

I don’t anticipate repercussions. But if there were, I don’t need the job. I like the job, but if Father asked me to step down, I would. I think I would.

Even if I did need the job, it isn’t something that would deter me from this. I’m not going to change my opinions.

 

Basketball on TV

My college alma mater’s women’s and men’s basketball teams are ranked in Division III; the men’s team currently is number 1. So guess which cable network is sending cameras to Friday night’s doubleheader against NYU? Before you click the link, take a guess at one of these answers:

A) ESPNU

B) The History Channel

C) Empire Sports Network

D) Comedy Central

E)  MSNBC

Go Yellowjackets!

 

Choice of Cheering Music

I ran across the article on the Opus Dei seminarians defeating the North American Martyrs in the Clericus Cup. I was intrigued that reform2 hasn’t hit our seminarians just yet:

At least the Martyrs’ fans continued to dominate the cheering section. One seminarian brought a battery-powered megaphone, and at one point he led the crowd in singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

Interesting choice; it wouldn’t have occurred to me. Which verse was fitting, do you suppose? Just for the record, the lyrics:

Chorus: Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home

I looked over Jordan and what did I see
Coming for to carry me home
A band of angels coming after me
Coming for to carry me home

(chorus)

Sometimes I’m up and sometimes I’m down
Coming for to carry me home
But still my soul feels heavenly bound
Coming for to carry me home

(chorus)

The brightest day that I can say
Coming for to carry me home
When Jesus washed my sins away,
Coming for to carry me home.

(chorus)

If I get there before you do
Coming for to carry me home
I’ll cut a hole and pull you through
Coming for to carry me home

(chorus)

At my Tuesday night sessions with the younger kids at the Crittenton Center, I use this song, too. My sense of it is more as a lullaby, sometimes with an altered text:

Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry you to bed
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry you to bed

 

Weekend In Iowa

Pardon the scarce posting the past few days. The family made a pilgrimage to Iowa this past weekend. The main intent was celebrating the diaconate ordination of a close friend. His wife passed away just two months ago, and we didn’t know until about a week before he and the archbishop decided to postpone his ordination until his life could settle.

We have close friends who are deacons, including in the two families to which we were closest during out five years at St Edward Parish in Waterloo. It’s hard for me to slip away on a non-summer weekend, but since it was all set up, there was no real reason not to go. Brit had only a half-day of school so we managed to hit town by 6PM Friday.

The ordination liturgy was my first in over twenty years. We were at St Raphael Cathedral in Dubuque (imaged before Mass above). It’s a bit of a strange place. Lots of wood, including the rood screen that separates the nave from the old high altar and tabernacle. But the floor is 100% carpet. Even so, the people sang with gusto. But you expect the spiritual motivation to overcome the floor padding for an event like this.

For me, the liturgy was just what the spiritual doctor ordered. It’s nice to go to a special Mass. And just pray. Archbishop Hanus preached mostly on Numbers 11, a curious choice at first glance, but very appropriate at least in terms of the realistic depiction of grumbling:

The foreign elements among them were so greedy for meat that even the Israelites lamented again, “Would that we had meat for food! We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna.”

How ubiquitous the Culture of Complaint!

We had a pleasant time visiting with diocesan friends at the reception, plus taking in the 9AM Mass at my old parish ( a mostly uncarpeted nave pictured above). One of the people I trained to be a cantor thought I was in town to interview for the music director position, recently opened up with a defection to a better-paying and full-time job.

Brittany gave a thumbs-up to the experience, even the two-hour ordination Mass. Anita asked how her day was before bed Saturday night, and she replied, “Great! I could really live here, Mom.”

The experience of going to Mass was bittersweet. It was neat to visit with old friends before and after liturgy. It sounded good to be worshipping in a great church building renovated by people who really had their priorities straight. But communities change and grow. I saw just a few of the people I knew as children when I worked there. I heard great stories about their involvement in Newman centers, or early in their professional careers–usually elsewhere and often out of Iowa completely.

Iowa was quite an extraordinary experience for me. While I understood that some people were driven to follow their star far from their place of birth–I am one of those people, after all. I could never quite comprehend why the powers-that-be in the communities of the state were and are so hell-bent on making it so unfriendly for young adults. Top that off with a very flimsy sense of cultural Catholicism, and I found my Sunday reflections saddened by the situation I saw.

On the way home, we stopped in Des Moines to see my daughter’s favorite hockey team cough up five second-period goals and fall to Milwaukee. During our waling break at second intermission came the question, “Dad, do you think the Stars can come back?”

I said, “Do you want my hopeful answer or a realistic one?”

I’m always hopeful that I’ll see something amazing at a hockey game, like a team battling back from five goals down to win. Sadly, it was not to be.

After the game we had a nice meal here, though the style of their Murgh Korma was a bit different from other Indian restaurants in the KC area–to the disappointment of my wife and daughter. I enjoyed a Kashmiri chicken dish in a tomato sauce. It was good, but not quite as good as the hearty chicken dishes I’ve had locally here. But we’re quibbling over a half-star as far as I’m concerned. I’ll definitely have to go back to that place and sample other food.

Ah well! It’s good to be home in Kansas City.