Russian Orthodox Continue Persecuting

The news isn’t new, but since so few Catholic and Orthodox web-logs are mentioning it, I thought I might take a few moments to remind readers that Russia is continuing to persecute both Christians and non-Christians in the recently annexed Crimea. It appears that both the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) and Orthodox Christians loyal to the Kievan Patriarch (as opposed to the Moscow Patriarch (MP)) are high on the target list. More details on what is going on over there are available from Eurasia Review.

Irrelevancy

Sometime around mid-2007, after graduating law school and worrying about a job as Son #2 was in utero, I became culturally irrelevant. Having sold off most of my (non-classical) music and movie collection a couple of years prior, I wasn’t interested in what was going on “artistically” in the world around me, mostly because very little of it sounded or looked like art; it resembled trash. I was dead to contemporary literature as well. After a brief but disastrous flirtation with being an English major in 1998 during my freshman year of college, I had sworn off fiction for almost a decade, though my wife, who double majored in English and Spanish, cajoled me now and again into putting down Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, or whatever philosophical page-turner had caught my fancy to read something — anything — of literary substance. It was nice. However, I quickly realized that I was woefully behind on all of those classics “everyone should read,” and so I told myself, facetiously, that  I would get around to folks like Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace right after I finished the complete novels of Anthony Trollope. (I haven’t even started yet.) Granted, I’ve made some exceptions here and there. For instance, in 2012 I bought used all of Cormac McCarthy’s novels for a song and proceeded to read them over the course of the summer. Also, during my brief tenure as a New Yorker subscriber, I read a short story or two.

More Hobby Lobby Thoughts

I can’t say I am surprised by the news and social-media reaction to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. I just didn’t think my patience for it would be so thin. The smug part of me thinks that people should have to digest all 95 pages of the opinion before being allowed to comment. The merciful part would never contemplate such a cruel and unusual form of punishment. Hobby Lobby isn’t poorly written, mind you; it’s just written like every other Supreme Court opinion: needlessly long, unnecessarily footnoted, obscure in some parts, incomplete in others, and so forth. Apparently it’s a slow news week given how much press and commentary this case is attracting. It is, by several orders of magnitude, less groundbreaking and important — from a legal and policy perspective — than last year’s “gay marriage” cases or 2012’s “Obamacare” decision. Still, as several learned observers have pointed out, Hobby Lobby has a lot of symbolic purchase for both religious and non-religious Americans. The First Amendment’s (mythical?) right to religious liberty was not front and center in the case, but the concept was in play just long enough for all sorts of folks with all sorts of ideological dispositions to use an exercise in statutory interpretation as an excuse to ramp the culture wars back up. To what end? Probably not a good one, at least for American Catholics.

Hobby Lobby

The waiting is over. On the last day of the term the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) released its opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, holding by a 5-4 decision (conservatives vs. liberals) that (certain?) privately held companies do not have to supply forms of contraception under the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) which violate the owner(s)’s religious beliefs. Despite all of the hype surrounding the case, including many American Catholics holding it up as a grand showdown over religious liberty, I agree with Eric Posner’s pre-decision assessment in Slate that the case is pretty much a bore. (Posner has some further post-decision thoughts here.)

More on 1962

Since I wrote “1962” a week ago, Fr. John Hunwicke has offered a few posts — peppered with his trademark wryness — on the 1962 liturgical books and slavish adherence to them: “Leading By Example,” “Prefaces,” and “Today…” As usual I find it difficult to disagree with Fr. Hunwicke’s critiques of the 1962 missal and office. In fact, as I made clear in my earlier post, I am sympathetic to individual priests and fraternities gradually shifting back toward certain pre-1962 practices and texts, especially the pre-1955 order for Holy Week.

Blog Contest

Dear Readers: Opus Publicum is having its first — and perhaps only — blog contest to replace the bland grey banner above with something — anything — more eye-pleasing. The only rule I am putting in place is that the image should be original to you and not a scan from a book or something you found on Wikipedia. Submissions of images should be sent to the following e-mail address: venuleius at g mail dot com. The contest opens today and will run until Friday, July 4. The winner of the contest will be given a series of books to choose from and may pick one to be shipped to them free of charge. No, I don’t know which books yet but I will endeavor, to the best of my ability, to throw in some variety.

Also, if you read this blog regularly, please do what you can to spread the word about its new location. If you know of other blogs that used to link to this one and haven’t updated the link, please let them know. Your support and prayers are always appreciated.