The recent midterm elections are not over – Florida’s ‘traditional’ recounts are still underway – but the results at large are clear. Confirming what polls predicted, Democrats retook the House and Republicans kept the Senate. Two years from now, somebody will probably be quoting President Truman’s ‘Do Nothing Congress.’
Editor’s Space
Jorge I. Domínguez-López is the editor-in-chief of The Tablet and Nuestra Voz, the two-award winning newspapers of the Diocese of Brooklyn. Born in Havana, Cuba, Domínguez-López regularly appears on NET-TV’s Currents News and is the co-host of “Al Pan, Pan,” a talk show with Father Tomás del Valle on NET-TV.
A Century After the Great War
Veterans Day, commemorated each year on Nov. 11, is the Day of the Armistice that put an end to the Great War a century ago this week. We often forget that World War II changed the name of the Great War into World War I. In that name – Great War – there was an implicit hope: that the horrors visited upon the world between 1914 and 1918 would never return. That hope was obliterated 21 years later, when Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland in September of 1939.
The Midterm Elections
“The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future,” Mark Twin famously said. Many times in our history, political pundits have learned and forgotten the wisdom of that dictum.
Let us forget Twain’s lesson again and make a prediction: After next week’s midterm elections, our country will be more divided than it is today.
The Politics of Canonizations
Sadly, we live in times when everything is viewed through a political prism. Two weeks ago, on the day of St. Oscar Romero’s canonization, NPR’s correspondent Sylvia Poggioli said: “As soon as he became pope, Francis authorized Romero’s canonization – a rebuke to his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who believed Romero was too far to the left.” This is a very narrow-minded, petty and, more importantly, erroneous way to read the history of canonizations during the last three pontificates.
The Canonization of a Radical
During his homily on Sunday, March 23, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of San Salvador made a special appeal to the National Guard soldiers of his country:
Kavanaugh’s Confirmation
Last Saturday, Judge Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th Associate Supreme Court Justice by Chief Justice John Roberts. Outside, protesters pushed past a police line and pounded on the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court chanting, “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Kavanaugh has got to go.”
A Season in Purgatory
Finally, autumn is here, after a long, painful summer. The Church and the country have gone to a veritable purgatory since last June. Sexual abuse scandals and allegations of sexual misdeeds and cover-ups have crowded the headlines almost every week.
Unity Requires Conversion
“In this time of pain and shame for our Catholic Church,” Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, Mass., said Our Heavenly Father “has given us this Encuentro as an oasis of joy, light and hope.”
This Beautiful Tapestry
If you are a baseball fan, at some point you have to wonder how Babe Dahlgren felt on May 2, 1939 in Detroit right before the game against the Tigers. That day, Dahlgren was asked by his manager Joe McCarthy to replace Lou Gehrig in the Yankees’ lineup.
