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Christian Witness, Perspective, Political, , , , , , , ,

Who gets hurt when you shop?

Interfaith Worker Justice points to a group of retailers who are either refusing to negotiate with workers or are proactively dragging worker organizers (on hunger strike) and worker advocates into court to in an attempt to block advocacy and worker organization.

Seems to me that we become less and less free when big corporations can so blithely attack the right of people to freely gather, or to espouse a cause. Something about that in some old document in Washington, but who remembers that anymore. First they came for the organizers, then…

In the first instance, the parent company of several chains, SuperValu, including a chain local to me, Save-A-Lot Stores, filed a suit against organizers and Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (Center of Workers United in Struggle — CTUL), IWJ’s affiliate in the Minneapolis-St. Paul. The workers had sought the Center’s assistance because as they state:

Every night, we are surrounded by food as we clean the grocery stores in our community. Yet often we cannot afford to put enough food on the table for our own families.

With the help of CTUL, workers who clean Cub Foods stores have been trying for over a year to engage Cub Foods in a dialogue about fair wages and working conditions. Also with the help of CTUL, workers went on Hunger Strike for 12 days beginning at the end of May, in a further effort to seek a dialogue. That hunger strike action resulted in SuperValu suing CTUL and its organizers personally.

Please pray for the workers and organizers, sign this on-line petition to support them, and if you are able, make a donation to assist in fighting off this assault on the Center and its organizers.

I Stand with CTUL for Fair Wages and Working Conditions for Retail Cleaning Workers in the Twin Cities

I am concerned about the many reports of human rights violations taking place in retail cleaning. When retail cleaning workers earn sub-poverty wages and have increasingly stressful workloads, this has a negative impact on our entire community. Therefore, I stand firmly with the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL) in calling on major retail chains (including Cub Foods, SuperValu, Target, and Lunds & Byerly’s) to partner with CTUL to create a code of conduct that guarantees fair wages and benefits for the workers who clean their stores.

Meanwhile at Walmart, work for change is building momentum because of the voices of workers and their advocates.

Walmart Associates throughout the country are standing up for change at Walmart – and IWJ is standing beside them as they work to make a difference in their stores and their company. Momentum is building – both for the Associate-led Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) and for Making Change at Walmart, a campaign that stands in solidarity with Associates claiming the respect they deserve.

No single employer in America has a larger impact on employment standards than Walmart. That’s why stopping Walmart’s race to the bottom is essential. From my point-of-view, the race to the bottom is becoming pervasive in our culture. We all want faster, less expensive, and more convenient, and the thing that makes that happen is a push to lower wages, eliminate benefits, and work people until they drop. The savings have to come from somewhere, so we no longer manufacture in our country, and the workers who are left have to pay the price for a better bottom line. Sadly, we also do it to our neighbors. Should our neighbor be a Union member who enjoys a better standard of living we say: ‘Why should he/she have it, take it away,’ and in due course we all loose what little we have.

If you are concerned in seeing change happen at Walmart, and at fighting against the race to the bottom, be sure to like the Making Change at Walmart Facebook page.

Begin with prayer for workers, and ask for strength to speak out. Speak up for worker rights. Ask that contractor who comes to your door whether his/her workers are employees. You would think that when they tell a worker to nail shingles to your roof that worker would be an employee. Unfortunately, most times employers illegally claim that workers are “independent.” Really!!! The boss is telling them to do something, what shingles to nail, how to do it, where to do it, when to do it, but they are “independent.” Ask your local restauranteur whether the people chopping food in the back room are paid fairly. Ask the chain market manager whether his/her workers are paid properly and have benefits. Then vote with your feet and dollars supporting only those who do right by their workers and your community.

Workers can find more information on minimum employment standards, and can file complaints at the U.S. Department of Labor’s We Can Help/Podemos ayudar webpage.

When did we clothe you, feed you, dress your wounds, visit you? Whenever you did it to these, the least of my brothers (Matthew 25:40).

Christian Witness, Perspective, ,

On Pentecost – Doing “and”

From Jim Wallis at Sojourners: Pentecost: The Coming of the Wild Goose

This Sunday is Pentecost. For 50 days, a group of 120 followers of Jesus waited. Their teacher, for whom they had left all they had, was now gone. Judas, one of their own, betrayed their master and then killed himself. The comforter they had been promised had not yet come. They picked Mathias as a replacement for Judas. And then they waited.

I have to speculate sometimes at the conversations that occurred during those 50 days from Easter until Pentecost. There were, I am sure, some nervous exchanges. Jesus had appeared to them: he had offered Thomas an opportunity to place his hands into his wounds; he had eaten fish with his disciples by the shore. But where was this promised comforter who would be with them always?

Pentecost is a part of the Christian calendar today, but for the disciples, it was the Feast of Shavuot, or the “Feast of Oaths.” It was a festival remembering the covenants God made with Noah after the flood, Abraham and the Israelites about a new homeland, and Moses on Mt. Sinai. It was a time to remember God’s faithfulness.

When I read Acts 2 and imagine the room filled with the small band of believers, a sound “like the rush of a violent wind” and tongues “as of fire” resting above each of their heads, my faith is encouraged. I am reminded that there are greater things at work in this world than what is at first visible. There is power and strength in the Spirit that God sent to the church. While there had only been 120 gathered in that room, 3,000 were added to their number that day.

While much of my work revolves around challenging unjust systems and structures, I do not doubt that the world we see around us of broken people and institutions is only a small portion of what is real. The Spirit of God extends wider and deeper and is at work in my life, the lives of others, and in the communities and institutions of this world. While I work for societal transformation, I try to stay rooted in the transforming work that the Spirit is constantly doing in me.

Too often, it feels like we need to make a choice between the work of this world, and the work of the Spirit, or between a personal focus, or a social focus of the gospel. “Either/or” marks how some churches present the Christian faith. Often, however, this is a false dichotomy. Early in the days of the Sojourners community I remember that one of our favorite words was “and.” We would talk about personal salvation and social justice, prayer and peacemaking, faith and action, belief and obedience, salvation and discipleship, worship and politics, spiritual transformation and social transformation. These were things that complemented one another and deepened each other instead of being in opposition.

In two weeks, my family and I will be headed down to Shakori Hills, North Carolina for the Wild Goose Festival. In the Celtic Church, the symbol for the Holy Spirit is a wild goose — wild, free, and untamed. The festival will be a weekend of justice, spirituality, music, and the arts. It is an “and” kind of space, more than an “either/or.” It will, no doubt, be a busy weekend. But I am looking forward to it, not just for the activities, but for the reminder that it is by chasing after the wild goose, the Holy Spirit’s movement, that we see ourselves, and our world, transformed.

Take a minute to watch this video below. It’s not too late join us.

Wild Goose Festival – June 23 – 26, 2011 – Shakori Hills Farm, NC from Wild Goose on Vimeo.

Current Events, Perspective, PNCC, Poetry,

Tornado in poetry

From Dr. John Z. Guzlowski:

I’ve been watching the Joplin news and posted a poem that I wrote years ago about a tornado that hit a small central Illinois town we were living in.

I’m posting as an additional reflection on the recent tornado in nearby Springfield, Massachusetts which touched down about one mikle away from St. Joseph’s PNC Parish.

Here are the first two stanzas of this powerful poem. As a parent, it tore through me.

My Daughter Lillian is Outside Playing

In the quiet space of the dining room
My wife and I lay out the place settings

The forks beside the Wedgwood plates
The spoons and knives in their places…

Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, , , ,

The concept of assent in a democratic Church

The Polish National Catholic Church rightly takes pride in the fact that its people, all its people, function as its legislative body. Per the Constitution of the PNCC:

ARTICLE VI — CHURCH AUTHORITY

SECTION 1. The authority of this Church is vested in three branches, namely: legislative, executive and judicial.

…

SECTION 3. In administrative, managerial and social matters, this Church derives its authority from the people who build, constitute, believe in, support and care for it. It is a fundamental principle of this Church that all Parish property, whether the same be real, personal, or mixed, is the property of those united with the Parish who build and support this Church and conform to the Rite, Constitution, Principles, Laws, Rules, Regulations, Customs and Usages of this Church.

SECTION 4. The administration, management and control over all the property of the Parish is vested in the Parish Committee elected by the Parish and confirmed by the Diocesan Bishop, and strictly dependent upon and answerable to the lawful authorities of this Church.

The Church is democratically governed, that is, its people make the decisions and express their will at Holy Synod, both the quadrennial General Synod and at Diocesan Synods.

One of the problems frequently seen in other Churches, with similar democratic forms of governance, is the constancy of faith, morals, Tradition, doctrine, and liturgy (within liturgical Churches) under a democratic decision making processes. Are there limits to democracy, and can democracy trump all things?

In a democratic Church, are you one vote away from deciding Jesus is not true-God and true-man, from denying the Virgin birth, from turning the resurrection into a fuzzy myth narrative of confused and poor disciples who carried along the beautiful message of Jesus because it was oh so special to them?

There are those, even within the PNCC, who take Bishop Hodur’s teaching on the democratic nature of the community of Church as a license to make everything subject to democratic process. This form of thinking places the individual in charge of the Church’s teaching, and frees them from the constraints of ‘all that old stuff we’ve gotten way past.’ They use enlightenment arguments, Bishop Hodur arguments, other Churches are doing it arguments, it suits me better arguments, and its unfair/unjust/un-democratic arguments. They only argument they fail to see is the Catholic argument, the linkage to the universal constant within which we strive to overcome what is personal to reach what is Divine.

InsideCatholic, a strongly apologist website which easily resorts to the “heretic” and “exommunicated” argument does make a solid point in Episcopal/Catholic Conversion Is a Two-Way Street:

The developing story of the new Apostolic Constitution for Anglicans continues to unfold in the media, boosted by the Anglican Communion’s instability due to the Episcopal Church and their co-revisionists in the Anglican Church of Canada. Less reported has been the equally well-trafficked path away from Rome and toward the Episcopal Church.

In 2009, Episcopal bishop and gay celebrity Gene Robinson crowed that his New Hampshire diocese was brimming with disaffected Catholics, drawn to the promise of a more inclusive church. While Bishop Robinson’s celebration was premature … he was not misrepresenting the source of some new pew occupants.

“Pope Ratzinger,” Bishop Robinson declared, referring to Benedict XVI by his given name in a late-2005 speech, “may be the best thing to happen to the Episcopal Church . . . . We are seeing so many Roman Catholics join the [Episcopal] church.”

Roman Catholics and Episcopalians have swapped places for years, easily facilitated by related liturgical forms and practices. Unlike other Reformation-era churches, the Church of England, then a geographic arm of the Roman Church, maintained the forms and hierarchies of its parent. The Anglo-Catholic wing of Anglicanism is the closest to its source, in many cases conducting services that are more recognizably Catholic than the post-Vatican II Mass. Some American conservatives see Rome’s embrace of theological orthodoxy — reasserted by Benedict and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II — as a compelling alternative to an increasingly listless Episcopal Church.

Similarly, liberal Catholics tied to their forms of worship enjoy the option to embrace the Episcopal Church’s “Catholicism Lite” without the inconvenient frowning upon birth control, abortion, or whatever the latest sexual lifestyle innovation might be.

The point being that if Church is merely choices, one may find the most comfortable outward portrayal of Church for oneself. One may find that place where a loose set of choices is constantly put up for personal and collective vote as the mood strikes today. It is a stunning lack of constancy and perseverance on the narrow road (Matthew 7:13-14).

As with any linear analysis of possible alternatives, one can find the place of balance. In the PNCC the balance point lies at the junction between democracy and assent. Democracy is a governing principal, and self determination over what one gives to build the Church. No one can take the parish, or the Church itself, away from those who “build, constitute, believe in, support and care for it.” In the same manner, no one can use the power of the vote to take the Catholic out of the Church, similarly taking catholicity away from those very same people.

At the XXIII General Synod, a perfect example of balance was on display. The Church Doctrine Commission presented two papers, “To Live in the Spirit of God,” which addressed Church teaching on current moral and bioethical issues, and “Eschatology in the PNCC: A Clarification.” Both were presented, not for a vote, but for the assent of the faithful.

In accord with the Constitution of the PNCC:

ARTICLE VI — CHURCH AUTHORITY

SECTION 2. In matters of Faith, morals and discipline the authority of this Church lies in the hands of the Prime Bishop, Diocesan Bishops and Clergy united with them. This authority is derived directly from God through Jesus Christ, agreeably with the words of our Savior: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20).

“Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 18:18)

The Church’s Catholic nature of Church precludes votes on doctrine and its Holy Tradition. As PNCC faithful, we are bound to conform our lives to the Church’s teaching, not as a matter of choice but as a matter of becoming.

Of course, we are not all there, conforming our lives and our choices perfectly to the Church’s guidance. It is difficult to lay down ones life (John 15:13). We all struggle in the gulf between our sinfulness and perfection, the gap between what is earthly and Divine within us. As we travel that road in growing closer to God’s desires for us, as we climb the ladder, we are called to become, to strive for that which is promised to the faithful. That promise is best fulfilled under the guiding and protecting hand of sound orthodox doctrine and Tradition — not a fuzzy assumption that we are any more right today in our personal choices than people have been for 2,000 years.

Yes, a Church can have a democratic form of governance and hold its Catholic faith through assent.

Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, Political, , , , , ,

Idle hands are the devil’s tools

From The Southern: Teens rocked by unemployment

Katie Pemberton is one of the lucky ones.

Pemberton, a Benton Consolidated High School senior, had no trouble landing a job the Franklin County election office, a requirement for her participation in the BCHS work program.

“I’ve been working here since the end of August, and I’ve had other jobs before,” she said. “It was really pretty easy to find one.”
Others weren’t so lucky, according to program coordinator Sandy Blackman, a BCHS teacher.

In years past, the school-to-work program had an enrollment of 15 to 20 students who attended school half a day and worked, for pay, at jobs in the community the other half of the day.

“We now have six kids,” Blackman said. “The jobs just aren’t out there.”

While Blackman doesn’t always match students to jobs, she does send out a letter to local businesses describing the program and asking employers to consider hiring her students.

Before the start of this school year, she sent out 250 such letters.

She got only one reply.

“We’ve had businesses that hire a student every year, but not this year,” she said.

The national economy is likely the culprit in the disappearance of teen jobs, she said.

“The kids come to me to ask about job openings and there just aren’t any,” Blackman said. “Some businesses can’t afford taking on another employee right now.”

Not alone

Blackman’s students aren’t alone in their failure to find a job.

According to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, the national unemployment rate for teens ages 16 to 19 was 25.4 percent in December. While that number dipped slightly from the 26.2 percent unemployed at the start of 2010, it represents a huge increase from December 2006, when only 14.6 percent were unemployed…

And from Bloomberg Businessweek: The Youth Unemployment Bomb

From Cairo to London to Brooklyn, too many young people are jobless and disaffected. Inside the global effort to put the next generation to work

In Tunisia, the young people who helped bring down a dictator are called hittistes—French-Arabic slang for those who lean against the wall. Their counterparts in Egypt, who on Feb. 1 forced President Hosni Mubarak to say he won’t seek reelection, are the shabab atileen, unemployed youths. The hittistes and shabab have brothers and sisters across the globe. In Britain, they are NEETs—”not in education, employment, or training.” In Japan, they are freeters: an amalgam of the English word freelance and the German word Arbeiter, or worker. Spaniards call them mileuristas, meaning they earn no more than 1,000 euros a month. In the U.S., they’re “boomerang” kids who move back home after college because they can’t find work. Even fast-growing China, where labor shortages are more common than surpluses, has its “ant tribe”—recent college graduates who crowd together in cheap flats on the fringes of big cities because they can’t find well-paying work.

In each of these nations, an economy that can’t generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a lost generation of the disaffected, unemployed, or underemployed—including growing numbers of recent college graduates for whom the post-crash economy has little to offer. Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was not the first time these alienated men and women have made themselves heard. Last year, British students outraged by proposed tuition increases—at a moment when a college education is no guarantee of prosperity—attacked the Conservative Party’s headquarters in London and pummeled a limousine carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla Bowles. Scuffles with police have repeatedly broken out at student demonstrations across Continental Europe. And last March in Oakland, Calif., students protesting tuition hikes walked onto Interstate 880, shutting it down for an hour in both directions…

Couple disaffected youth, the hopelessness that the new economy has wrought (no, you never will catch up with your parent’s standard, much less gain any power) and throw in a few friends who learned the fine art of IED making in Afghanistan and Iraq, and — well you know who they’ll be targeting first.

Our challenge, particularly as Christians, is not to pull the wool over their eyes, or gloss over the struggle, but to show them that there actually is something else. We have the place where worldliness and all that comes with it is of little importance, where small community and self-reliance make for a good and positive life, the place where we work together, for each other and for the Everlasting. Should we teach them about iPods or I-we-and-Thee?

As it was in 1897, so it is today in the year 1910, that Bishop Hodur is a supporter of reform in the civil or the social spirit, he is for the nationalization of the land, of churches, schools, factories, mines and the means of production. He has stated this openly and states it publicly today, he does not hide his sympathies for the workers’ movement and he will never hide them, and he considers himself nothing else than a worker in God’s Church.

But the bishop is an opponent of erasing religion from the cultural work of humanity — indeed, Bishop Hodur believes strongly and is convinced that all progress, growth, just and harmonious shaping of human relations must come from a religious foundation, lean on Divine ethics, and then such growth will be permanent and will give humanity happiness. — Straz, 21 Jan. 1910.

Perspective, Political, , , , , ,

Not getting better, and where to cut

From a report of the Congressional Budget Office: CBO Reports Record Deficits For 2011 Along With Slow Job Growth

The report will likely accelerate calls by Congress to reduce spending for the remainder of fiscal 2011, which began on November 1. The House Majority, in the coming weeks, will consider a cut of at least $55 to $60 billion from fiscal 2011, bringing non-discretionary spending in line with fiscal 2008 levels. While certain spending cuts are a wise conservation of resources (cut military spending, get out of foreign wars, stop extravagant support of nations like Israel, cut back Homeland Security to reduce the overwrought sense of fear imposed on most Americans), spending on support like unemployment insurance as a bridge, and job retraining, are a wise investment. We have need new competitiveness, and these sorts of initiatives will only make us stronger. Of course, we could just send the unemployed off to foreign lands — and reduce the surplus population.

Deficit: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected the deficit for fiscal year 2011, will be almost $1.5 trillion, or 9.8 percent of the gross domestic product, up from $1.29 trillion in 2010.Employment Outlook:

Jobs Recovery Slower than Past Recessions: CBO said the recovery in jobs has been much slower in this recession than after past recessions and it predicted economic growth will remain “below potential” for several more years.

Hiring Slowed by Changes in the Economy: CBO said payroll employment, which plunged by 7.3 million during the recent recession, rose by only 70,000 jobs, on net, between June 2009 and December 2010. “The recovery in employment has been slowed not only by the slow growth in output, but also by structural changes in the labor market, such as a mismatch between the requirements of available jobs and the skills of job seekers,” the report said.

Employment Will Not Recover Until 2016: CBO expects the economy to add about 2.5 million jobs a year from 2011 to 2016. However, it cautioned, “Even with significant increases in the number of jobs, a substantial reduction in the unemployment rate will take some time.” The unemployment rate should fall to 9.2 percent by the end of 2011, 8.2 percent by the end of 2012, and 7.4 percent by the end of 2013 – reaching 5.3 percent only in 2016, according to CBO’s forecast.

Other reports worth noting from the Congressional Research Service:

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

Accidents of history

From the Ekonom:east Media Group: Roman Catholics in Vienna still protest over giving church to SPC

Members of the Roman Catholic parish of Neulerchenfeld in Vienna, whose church will be given as a present to the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), are continuing to protest the decision of the Archdiocese of Vienna.

After collecting signatures against the decision, parish members – mostly of Polish descent – organized a protest in downtown Vienna late last year, and are now threatening disobedience to the Roman Catholic Church.

The Neulerchenfeld parish does not want to comply with the decision of Archbishop of Vienna Christoph Schonborn, and 800 of its members were very surprised when the gift was made official with a contract earlier this month.

The parishioners claim they were not informed about the signing of the contract between the Archdiocese of Vienna and the Serb Orthodox church of St. Sava.

In a statement to the media, they said they will continue to fight for their church, and might stop paying church taxes.

The Archdiocese of Vienna and the Serb Orthodox church in Vienna signed a deal at the start of the year that the Roman Catholic church in Neulerchenfeld will be given as a gift to SPC.

The church is set to replace the Temple of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, located in Vienna’s 17th district, which was too small to hold all of the faithful. The church in Neulerchenfeld, also dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, was built between 1733 and 1753.

The church given as a present is much bigger that the current Serbian Orthodox church and can hold over 1,000 people.

And from CWNews via ByzCath: Vienna: laity protest cardinal’s gift of parish to Serbian Orthodox

The laity of a largely Polish parish in Vienna are protesting Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s decision to give their parish to the Serbian Orthodox Church. Pfarre Neulerchenfeld was constructed between 1733 and 1753. Austria’s largest newspaper reports that the parish has far higher Sunday Mass attendance than many other area parishes.

A parish with a large Sunday attendance of 800 plus, mostly Poles, is given away while other parishes with sparse attendance remain empty. What is interesting is that this is being done by an Austrian Bishop. Putting together some historical antecedents, something special to Poles is being taken from them by an Austrian, and given to what is in effect Russians. It would only be more ironic if the Austrians sent in German police to remove the Poles.

I am stressing the irony here to make a point. First, that these sorts of things remain in historical memory. Second, that the Roman corporate sole model of church property administration yields actions like these.

It is also unfortunate that a strong group of faithful in a living parish (not declining, priest-less, and empty) is being forced out by a bishop with absolute control, and without consultation. This general mode of operation in the Roman Church is becoming more and more familiar as church closings become more widespread. It remains that the only model capable of overcoming control structures like these is the democratic Church model as practiced within the PNCC.

Allegory of the 1st partition of Poland -- Catherine II of Russia, Joseph II of Austria, and Frederick the Great of Prussia divide Poland
Art, Christian Witness, Perspective, Xpost to PGF, , ,

It’s Not Just Black And White – Jailing Everyone

The Arizona State University Art Museum presents It’s Not Just Black And White by Gregory Sale – Social Studies Project 6, February 1 – May 14, 2011. The Season Opening Reception will be held Friday, February 18th from 7-9pm. Social Studies Project 6 will be installed in the Turk Gallery of the ASU Art Museum’s Nelson Fine Arts Center location.

With a population of roughly 6.5 million, (Arizona has) over 40,000 inmates. The state of Washington, with a population slightly larger than Arizona, has roughly 18,000. — The Arizona Republic, January 28, 2011

A recent Pew Center report indicates that in 2008, one in 33 adults in Arizona was under correctional control, which includes jail, prison, parole and probation. Twenty-five years ago, this number was one in 79. What has changed so much is not human nature, but the offenses for which we incarcerate and the imposition of mandatory sentences. — Rep. Cecil Ash, R-Mesa (Ariz.) quoted in the Arizona Capitol Times, December 11, 2009

It’s not just black and white is a three-month-long residency exhibition with Gregory Sale, a Phoenix-based artist who will work through artistic gestures to initiate and host dialogue, aspiring to give voice to the multiple constituencies of the corrections, incarceration and criminal justice systems. The ASU Art Museum gallery space will operate as a site for developing and displaying visual and mediated exhibitions, dance and other staged events, discussions and readings.

As the title It’s not just black and white implies, the intent of the project is to expose and examine the many often conflicting viewpoints, perspectives and values that are generated from serious considerations of justice and public safety. The project will provide the opportunity for the public to explore the impact of modern criminal justice through fact-based tours, dialogues and programs – offering more first-hand experience of the many strands that make up this complicated narrative.

ASU Art Museum Social Studies Initiative

The Museum’s Social Studies initiative is a series of residency exhibitions, begun in 2007, that explore this dialogue-based, process-oriented context by literally bringing the studio into the museum, and by engaging the public directly in the creative process of exhibition-making in the space where “the art object” is usually found.

The ASU Art Museum continues to transform museum traditions by returning to the original sociological function of the institution – to encourage the circulation of ideas embedded in the archive, to provide a safe place for curiosity and to create an exchange point for the flow of conversation between and among artists, curators, collectors, students, social and governmental institutions, and the public.

It’s not just black and white is supported by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Friends of the ASU Art Museum.

Other events:

Collecting Contemporary Art: The FUNd at ASU Art Museum
Curator: Heather Lineberry
Dec 18, 2010 – May 14, 2011
Location: ASU Art Museum
Cost: Free

Collecting Contemporary Art features a selection of works acquired in part or in whole by the FUNd at ASU Art Museum, an endowment established by the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. From monumental found-object installations to print portfolios of etchings and lithographs, the international pieces share a current of experimentation and an exploration of social and political concerns. The exhibition charts the Museum’s collecting goals and exhibition history over the past 15 years, with significant representation of Latin American and Latino artists, artists from Arizona and artists in residence at the Museum. Artists represented include Kim Abeles (Los Angeles), John Ahearn (New York), Abel Barroso (Cuba), Sandow Birk (Los Angeles), Xu Bing (China), Deborah Butterfield (Montana/Hawaii), Enrique Chagoya (born in Mexico, active in the U.S.), Colin Chillag (Phoenix), Sue Coe (born in England, active in the U.S.), Jon Haddock (Tempe), Kcho (Cuba), Los Carpinteros (Cuba), Aimee Garcia Marrero (Cuba), Paulo Nenflidio (Brazil), Adriana Varejao (Brazil) and Kurt Weiser (Tempe).

Citadel: An Installation by Patricia Sannit
Curator: Peter Held
Feb 5, 2011 – Apr 9, 2011
Location: Ceramics Research Center
Cost: Free
Opening Reception: Feb. 18, 2011, 7-9 p.m.

Patricia Sannit, a Phoenix-based artist whose vessels are influenced by cultures worldwide, is literally breaking new ground for her installation Citadel — with the assistance of scores of community volunteers. Citadel is a 10-foot diameter structure inspired by an Iraqi archeological site called the Citadel at Erbil, in the Kurdish region. Sannit’s new direction explores the layering of time and history through the medium of clay.

Re-Thinking the Faculty Exhibition 2011
Feb 19, 2011 – Apr 30, 2011
Location: ASU Art Museum
Cost: free
Opening Reception: Feb. 18, 2011, 7-9 p.m.

This year, the faculty show takes a new direction. It represents the beginning of an exciting set of possible partnerships, exchanges and experiments between the School of Art and the ASU Art Museum. It’s also the first instance of the museum’s rethinking and revitalizing the way we do things, as part of our Re-Thinking the Museum initiative.

Art historian and writer Robert Atkins was selected to open Re-Thinking the Museum as juror/curator of the ASU School of Art Faculty Biennial Exhibition. During the month of November, Atkins reviewed submissions, visited artists’ studios and discussed opportunities for site-specific installations as he selected work for the 2011 exhibition.

Arizona State University Art Museum
Mill Avenue at 10th Street
Tempe, AZ 85287-2911
Telephone 480-965-2787

Perspective, PNCC

Where to go?

From the Toledo Blade: Its building is demolished, but congregation goes on

KANSAS, Ohio — A 5 1/2-year battle by members of the former St. James Catholic Church to save their closed parish came to an unceremonious end when the Toledo Catholic Diocese sent a wrecking ball to raze the historic church.

“It’s pretty much a sense of closure,” said former parishioner Steve Johnson. “To see an unused, empty building sitting there all that time was probably more disappointing. To me, we can move on.”

The white wood-frame building that had stood in this rural Seneca County community for 121 years was demolished a week before Christmas while a small crowd of ex-parishioners watched.

St. James Church and the parish house next door were razed “at the request of the local community,” as were two other Ohio churches in the diocese — in North Creek and Cuba — more than six months ago, said Sally Oberski, director of communications for the diocese.

Former members of St. James said they wanted to keep the building, which is about 40 miles southeast of Toledo, but the diocese told them it could not be used as a church.

“They would have given it to us if we used it for dances and social meetings, but when we said we wanted to use it for worship, they said no,” Ginny Hull said.

Given those options, the ex-members said, they decided to have the diocese raze the church.

“We didn’t want to see it slowly deteriorate,” Mrs. Hull said.

“We’re a community, and it’s a building. It had a lot of memories, and that’s sad to see that happen, but we’re still together.”

Fran Lucius, 61, whose great-grandparents helped found St. James in 1889, was given the church’s bell and the bell tower by the diocese. Those artifacts are being stored in the Lucius barn, within sight of where the church had been, with plans for using them as a memorial to the closed parish. Ms. Lucius was among those who watched the demolition.

“I hated to see it come down,” she said. “I looked at it like this: It’s not just for me, but I’m going clear back to my great-grandparents. Look what they sacrificed to build the church and to keep it going during the Depression. All we asked was to give us a priest once a month to keep the parish going. Sooner or later something might have happened.”

St. James was one of 17 churches ordered shut by Bishop Leonard Blair on July 1, 2005, a decision that church officials said was necessary because of a growing shortage of priests and shifting demographics in the 19-county diocese.

When St. James’ parishioners were told their church was going to be closed, they began a round-the-clock prayer vigil in the building. Fifty people took turns praying 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in hopes that their prayers would be answered and the church would be spared.

They also hired a Canon lawyer, filing an appeal to the Vatican, seeking to have the bishop’s decision overturned.

The Vatican eventually upheld Bishop Blair, saying he had followed proper procedures in closing St. James.

Their prayer vigil came to an abrupt halt after 10 months, when the diocese sent a maintenance worker to the church on March 6, 2006. The worker ordered an elderly woman out of the pews, then changed the locks on the building. The diocese said, “The decision to secure the building was made for insurance liability reasons.”

Former members of St. James, which had about 200 parishioners and $78,000 in its diocesan account when it was closed, also pursued their case in civil court.

They sued the diocese un- successfully in Seneca County Common Pleas Court, the Ohio 3rd District Court of Appeals, and the Ohio Supreme Court.

All told, the tiny parish spent more than $100,000 in legal fees.

There are no regrets, they said.

“We did everything we could to keep the place. We’re not sorry,” said Mrs. Hull, who had organized the prayer vigil and broke down in tears when the diocese locked the ex-parishioners out.

The group is still forging ahead as a parish, albeit not in the Roman Catholic Church.

About 50 members formed a nonprofit group, Kansas St. James Parish of Ohio Inc., in 2006, and have been meeting every Sunday for prayer services in Kansas’ United Methodist Church. For several years, a priest in the Polish National Catholic Church drove once a month from suburban Detroit to celebrate Mass with the Kansas faithful.

Lately, Kansas St. James Parish has been holding Mass at 10:30 a.m. every Sunday with a married priest, the Rev. Randal LaFond, as celebrant.

The group discovered Father LaFond via the Internet, Mrs. Hull said.

…

Father LaFond is a member of CITI Ministries Inc. — the name is an acronym for Celibacy Is The Issue, Ms. Hull said. The Brunswick, Maine, group promotes the availability of married and other resigned Roman Catholic priests, who, they say, are still priests according to Canon law.

Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Hull said Kansas St. James Parish of Ohio is looking to buy a building or to purchase land on which to build a church.

“I love that we have been operating our church independently and have been carrying out our mission to our community,” Mr. Johnson said. “This is a difficult economic time, and communities like Kansas need a church much more than they ever needed that particular building.”

CITI Ministries is otherwise known as “Rent-a-Priest.” I am not sure as to why the group decided to go with CITI rather than with the PNCC.

In some cases, the traditionalism and prayer of the PNCC are seen as too different from the manner in which Roman Catholicism is widely practiced in the United States. People also have to be prepared to adapt to theological differences. This can be too high a hurdle for some, and puts them too far outside their comfort zone. The remaining problem, through, is that groups like CITI have no bishop, and without the bishop there is no Church. I wish them luck in their discernment.

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