New Column in Framingham TAB

Pope Column

I've gotten some feedback from the St. Jeremiah crowd on it, all of it positive. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

C'mon, Strahan, do your worst, and don't forget! The more you attack me, the more resolve you give those pushing for a vigil. Mistreatment can come in many forms.

Maybe there's a God above...

I got an email from my editor today. I'd asked him whether he wanted me to write this week's column on the Pope stuff (from the perspective of a militant Catholic) or on the building behind me which blew up last week. He picked the former.

Well, he asked for it.

I'll be writing that as soon as I get some of this J2 assignment done. Either that or between my class and my rehearsal for my Acting final on Friday. I can say right now, though, that's it's not going to be as complimentary as all of the other pieces that have been written about him.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

And every breath we drew was 'Hallelujah!'

I was supposed to write a column for this week. I came up with a few different topics that I could have used, and I even started to hash one out late last night, but after only a few paragraphs, I realized that it would probably be in my best interest not to write.

I had begun a column about the Pope's passing. I was going to title it, "Ne Habemus Papam", Latin for 'We do not have a Pope.' And I used an adapted famous line as my opener:

"The Pope is dead; long live the Pope."

A few months ago, back when it appeared the Pope was close to death (he recovered), I had an argument with a friend online about it. He's a devout Catholic, one who tries to follow the Catechism like he should. I'm much less of someone who follows the Catechism in every way. I describe myself as a militant Catholic, as the articles on my suite wall would indicate.

And I said that neither option in the Pope's health was favorable to my situations. If the Pope lived, nothing would change. If the Pope died, the likelihood was that a more conservative Pope would be elected, and my scenarios would deteriorate. So, in my cynical logic, I thought it best that His Holiness remain alive.

Yes, I know that sounds bad. I only hoped for the Pope's health because it was 'convenient' for me. And I don't know if I regret it or not.

But the Pope has now died, and my situation remains fairly unchanged. The likelihood that the Archdiocese will throw us anything, in light of what they've given St. Anselm's, is slim. And rumors swirl that the Meade-Eisner committee even went so far as to recommend that St. George close and St. Jeremiah remain, to be received by an emphatic 'No' from the Archbishop himself.

I cannot bring myself to shed a tear for the deceased Pontiff. Four years ago, I would have. But, like I wrote to my friend online, either he didn't know about the sex abuse stuff, he didn't about it, or he just didn't do anything. And every single one of those options, whichever is the truth, destroyed any sense of empathy or compassion I might have had.

If he didn't know, then the hierarchy didn't tell him. The process will have failed to act as it should, and as the leader of that process, the buck should stop with him.

If he didn't care, which I doubt, then there are bigger problems than process issues.

And if he didn't do anything, then how does that reflect on his papacy? He could combat communism but he couldn't assuage the worries and fears of an angry city? He could canonize more than 500 miracle-workers, but he couldn't demonize a handful of evil men? Incompetence.

I will watch his funeral, and I will pay attention to how the pope selection process works, but mostly out of curiosity than direct effect. The new Pope won't give any more of a damn than the old one did, and until these people entrusted with our leadership start explaining themselves and actually leading, far be it from me to worry about their own personal safety.

Transparency.

My Classes for Next Semester

After about 45 minutes of cursing at the computer and phone for their failures to help me register, I got through.

JRN 201 - Journalism 2
PHL 150 - Understanding the Bible
MUS 120 - Music of the USA
LNR 102 - Russian 2

I think I did pretty well. I was originally scheduled for Exploring Humanities Through Film, but decided to drop it when I couldn't get into Acting 1. But I like my schedule.

And the Holy Ghost was moving too...

A friend of mine who goes to the University of Iowa and I were talking today. We frequently have little arguments about which part of the country is better (he's from Wisconsin). His argument of choice today was that all of New England was preppies. Preppies who came from money, I believe, to be a little more precise.

After that I made the point that some parts of the Northeast might be rich (in Massachusetts, Sudbury, Weston, most of Connecticut, Westchester County, NY, at least half of Rhose Island), not all of it is. My town runs the gamut in the whole economic status thing. You'll find homeless people downtown, and you'll find the two million-dollar mansions near the Sudbury line.

For me, however, it's somewhere in the middle. I don't come from money. My father earns enough that we can live comfortably where we are, but we wouldn't be able to do so in some other places. My parents didn't come from money. My mother's father worked at a cement plant, and her mother was a teacher. My father's father worked with computers in a small capacity after he immigrated for good. Both of my father's parents had to flee Europe to avoid the Nazis - my grandfather (Opa) because he was in Germany and being actively recruited, and my grandmother (Oma) because she was in Hungary and being actively exterminated.

I'm not here on a full-ride, either. I got a fair amount of financial aid, but I'm not being entirely paid for by the school. My family is having to make changes to afford to send me here. When the lease on my father's Ford Explorer ran out, a year or so ago, he did not lease a new one, as had been the run for several years. Instead, he purchased an old Lincoln Mark VIII with problems in the air-ride that can't be fixed, and a windshield that needed replacing. I've currently got a registration block that I can't resolve immediately because Northeastern screwed up the payment plan my family is working with.

This school used to be different. Very much so, in fact. It used to primarily be a commuter school. That's how it was when both my parents went here in the early '80s. My mother lived on-campus only one semester, choosing instead to commute from Needham each morning, for 8 AMs, no less. My father transferred here from Manhattan College. (Interesting trivia, Manhattan is a Catholic College run almost entirely by friars [monks] of the LaSallian order. The monk that gave his name to the nickname of their sports teams, Brother Jasper, is credited with inventing the Seventh Inning Stretch.) He was there as a political science major, and didn't enjoy the program at all. Felt it was very weak. The school's gone downhill since then. He transferred here where he created his own co-op at least once, and organized his schedule, when not on co-op, so that he could work an internship at the same time.

Yes, I've met some preppies here, especially in this building of all buildings. But I don't use the term freely, since I remember it being an insult of the highest degree when I was in elementary school. But as a generalization, the idea that all students of this school are rich preppies is too much. Yes, there is rich. Yes, there is preppy. And yes, the two groups often coincide. But not all.

Of course, Boston College is a whole different story...