Chicago's Saint

Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917) is considered a Chicagoan, even though she spent most of her life living and working in other places.  When she was about 30 years old, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Pope (Leo XIII) gave her a mission:  to help Italian immigrants in America.  From New York to cities on the west coast, she and her companions founded schools, orphanages and hospitals.  Chicago claims her because she founded Assumption school (1899) and two hospitals in the city (1903, 1909).  She died in Chicago, December 22, 1917, and was canonized in 1946, making her the first American citizen to receive canonization.  Memory of her work during the last three or four decades has been a bit muted, although the name Cabrini-Green is known to all Chicagoans.  But all that is set to change, as Chicago rediscovers the legacy of Mother Cabrini when her renovated shrine, a chapel dedicated to her in 1955, once part of Columbus hospital (2900 Lake Shore Drive), re-opens as a self-standing chapel surrounded by gardens at the end of September 2012.  The website is already open to the public:  www.cabrinishrinechicago.com.

President Obama's commencement speech at Notre Dame

Mid afternoon on Sunday, May 17, 2009, President Obama spoke in a packed stadium to the class of 2009.  He detailed his community work in Chicago, saying "it was through the service that I was brought to Christ." He also paid special tribute to Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago during that period, whom he heard at one of the first organizing meetings he attended on the South Side:  "He was a kind and good and wise man, a saintly man."

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

And additionally:

Links:

Full text of speech from NPR.org (May 18, 2009).

Salve Regina!

Happy Graduation Day to Students of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, a short stone's throw from the Windy City.  Theirs is a day that will undoubtedly be remembered for some time to come by the rest of the nation, given the current controvery over whether or not President Obama should have been invited to give the commencement address and receive an honorary degree.  What all the angry noise over this invitation reveals is both right-wing political stategy and the underlying fundamentalist tendencies in Roman Catholicism today.

Take for example one of the ideologue-leaders in the protest movement, Patrick J. Reilly, the president of the Cardinal Newman Society.  He works in consort with Fox News, and condemns main-line Catholic publications such as National Catholic Reporter and America Magazine (Reilly, "Notre Dame's Betrayal," May 2009).  It is unlikely that Newman himself would have desired to be a member of the society that uses his name.

For many Catholics it is shocking to see the litmus test of acceptable morality reduced to the question of abortion, when there are so many other civic and moral issues to address in the United States today:  capital punishment, social justice, peace, human rights (torturing prisoners)... to name only a few.  It is even more shocking that a certain number of Catholic bishops have fallen in with the fundamentalist faction.

As a way of honoring the students at Notre Dame, who may not have enthusiastically embraced so much media attention focusing on their ceremony, which indeed, should be about their entry into the world with their diplomas-in-hand, I would like to offer two clips that seems to reconcile diverse branches of the church in music of celebration:

Links:

James Carroll, "Notre Dame's stand against Catholic Fundamentalism," Salon.com (May 17, 2009).

Daniela Ramirez, "Notre Dame Should Applaud Obama's Choice," Huffington Post (May 17, 2009).

Follow "Notre Dame" on Twitter (www.twitter.com).

Reigion / Sociology / Politics in and from Chicago

The University of Chicago hosts one of the most impressive research teams dealing with the sociology of religion in the United States, NORC, the National Opinion Research Center (www.norc.org), within the division of the Center for Study of Politics and Society (CSPS).

The project for the study of the sociology of religion, jointly led by Father Andrew Greeley (www.agreeley.com), William Dinges and Dean Hoge was completed in 1998, and a summary was revealed to the public in the July 17, 1998 issue of Commonweal (www.commonwealmagazine.org).

After the 2002 sex scandals in the Catholic Church in America, the trying times affected the numbers of practicing Catholics in the USA. The crisis was poignantly noted by Peter Steinfels in A People Adrift. The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (Simon and Schuster, 2003).

The Catholic church also divided over the issue of the War in Iraq.  Bishop Wilton Gregory, leader of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote to Condoleeza Rice, George Bush's security advisor, as early as September 2002, cautioning respect for the conditions necessary to engage in a just war.  The Bishops issued joint statements about this on November 13, 2002 and February 26, 2003.  However, neo-conservative Catholics supported the war effort.

Links / Bibliographic sources:

"Bishops Are Wary of Strike on Iraq," New York Times (September 18, 2002).

Carroll, Colleen, The New Faithful, Chicago: Loyola Press, 2002.

Decherf, Dominique, "L'Eglise catholique aux Etats-Unis : Un géant sans voix ?," Etudes 3996 (December 2003) 633-642.

Gibson, David, The Coming Catholic Church.  How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism, San Francisco: Harper, 2003.

Greeley, Andrew M., The Catholic Imagination, New Edition, University of California Press, 2001.

—,  The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council, University of California Press, 2004.

—, A Stupid, Unjust, and Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007, New York: Forge Books, 2007.

Ledru, Raymond, "Les Noirs catholiques aux Etats-Unis : Une 'double minorité' préoccupante," Etudes 3986 (June 2003) 787-798.

Fire at Holy Name Cathedral

A fire that began in the attic blazed for two and a half hours at Holy Name Cathedral on the morning of February 4, 2009, as reported by Chicago Breaking News and the Chicago Tribune.  The Cathedral, which has been under repair following damage in the ceiling, will be closing its doors for the second time in a year.

Links:

Associated Press, "Illinois: Electrical Problem Eyed in Fire," New York Times (February 6, 2009).

Margaret Remirez, Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and James Janega, "Fire at Holy Name Cathedral stirs emotion, cleanup and search for cause," Chicago Tribune (February 5, 2009).

"Worshipers gather after Holy Name fire," Chicago Breaking News (February 5, 2009).

"Holy Name blaze tested firefighters' tactics," Chicago Breaking News (February 4, 2009).

Catholic Chicago

The Chicago History Museum has been hosting an exhibit called "Catholic Chicago" which runs until January 4, 2009.  A number of the exhibits features can be visited on-line, including the Eucharistic Congress of June 1926.  

Other historic moments in the city's Catholic past include:

1958.  Fire at Our Lady of the Angels school.  See Peter Steinfels, "A Most Awful Inferno, 50 Years Ago This Week" New York Times (December 6, 2008).

1982.  Joseph Cardinal Bernardin appeared on the cover of Time (November 29, 1982) as an actor in the cover-story "God and the Bomb: Catholic Bishops Debate Nuclear Morality."

1996.  Memorial services for Joseph Cardinal Bernadin, Archbishop of Chicago.  See "Cardinal Bernardin: In Memoriam" PBS (November 14, 1996).