The Judge Report

Father Rutler Says . . .

2013-05-18T20:42:03Z

FROM THE PASTOR
May 19, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler

There is some sense to calling Pentecost the birthday of the Church, but it can be somewhat glib. You might say that the Church was born when Christ was born, or when water and blood, Baptism and Eucharist, flowed from Christ’s side on the Cross. You might even say that the Church was born with Adam and Eve and came to maturity when Jesus, the new Adam, and his mother Mary, the new Eve, greeted each other in the unrecorded instant before the break of Easter dawn. What we can say with precision is that on Pentecost the bond of love between the Eternal Father and the Eternal Son filled the Church. When Christ prayed the night before he died, he spoke of that unifier which is the Holy Spirit: “I made known to them your name, and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them” (John 17:26).

   The Year of Faith proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI is to put to work the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are given in Confirmation: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. They give life to the Seven Holy Virtues and defeat the Seven Deadly Sins. He who has never been tempted by those sins would be an oyster or a rock rather than a human. Perhaps the most underestimated sin is sloth. It is not simple laziness: sloth is spiritual apathy that dampens ardor for serving God in our short lifespan. An example of this is an individual who recently complained about Pope Francis canonizing the 813 martyrs of Otranto, since it might be taken as an affront to Islam. We cannot pretend that they were martyred by wild Methodists brandishing water pistols, but the real problem is that slothful souls cannot understand why anyone would give one’s life for Christ. Rather, Pope Francis said, “As we venerate the martyrs of Otranto, let us ask God to sustain those many Christians who, in these times and in many parts of the world, right now, still suffer violence, and that he give them the courage and fidelity to respond to evil with good.”

   In our corner of the Church, which is New York, sloth is more subtle than heresy or blasphemy or wrath. Notwithstanding all the good things in our archdiocese, it is significantly below many other areas of our nation in attendance at Holy Mass and in priestly vocations. This is not what one would expect of a people filled with the Holy Spirit. With the beauty of worship in our parish, and the springtime of vocations exemplified by two of our young men being ordained this month, we too may risk becoming smug, a condition as ugly as it sounds, forgetting that there is much more to do. “Come Holy Spirit. Enlighten the hearts of your faithful people.”

High quality audio recordings of Fr. Rutler's Sunday homilies, which often elaborate upon the themes discussed in these emailed columns, are available on the COS website at:

http://www.oursaviournyc.org/multimedia/audio

There is no charge to access the audio recordings.

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Our website is www.OurSaviourNYC.org.

Hail, All Hail, and Farewell

2013-05-13T05:21:04Z

One of the rather annoying things about being married to a long-time teacher is that wherever we go in the Amsterdam area we bump into her former students or their families, mostly people I don't know at all, and they're constantly hugging her and telling her what everyone's been up to while I wait patiently in the background waiting to check out the cornflakes or whatever. It happened a few days ago at a restaurant, some girl going off to college, and a few days earlier after Mass, some high school kid. She's been at it so long that some of those early four year olds are now out of grad school. I get a little tired of hearing what a great teacher she is, how she influenced their lives, the best ever, all that stuff. I mean, it's ALL THE TIME. Even when she's not around, I'll get introduced to somebody, enjoy watching their face light up in recognition and then POW, the inevitable, "You must be Mrs. Going's husband!"

My grandfather, James Edward Going, was the third member of his family to enter St. Mary's Institute, back around 1898 or 1899. When he grew up and had kids of his own, he made my grandmother promise that if anything happened to him, she would keep the kids in St. Mary's. And then he died at 41. She kept the promise, even though it meant living in slum-level housing and working her buns off.

When Dad moved his family back to Amsterdam in 1960, one of the first stops he made was to sign us all up at SMI. First we had to get all dressed up and go to the convent on Grove Street to meet with Sr. Isadore and get her approval. Dad made sure we all stood up when Sister entered the sitting room. We passed.

Mom started teaching there not long after, and in a couple of stints put in about seven years on the faculty. And then our four kids went there as well, and now our granddaughter. Mary's been teaching the little ones for some 22 years. In the early years she took Louisa to school with her. I think Louisa graduated from pre-K four times.

And now, in just a few short weeks, when Laura graduates from Kindergarten, my family's 114 year connection to St. Mary's Institute will be severed, probably permanently.

Mary and I spent Friday night and all day Saturday clearing out her personal belongings, as directed. I got the two closets. In the one by the door I found, buried beneath a pile of books, two tiny photos of Louisa when she was about two or three. The walk-in closet in the back was a nightmare. I just pulled the stuff out layer by later, box by box, bag by bag, until I finally reached the shelf on the farthest wall.

The last thing I found there was an apron, made by the home room mothers of the pre-K class of 1992. All the kids had signed their names, except for Louisa who had help from the helpers (she was only two at the time). We had a hard time with that one.

Louisa surprised her mother on Saturday by arriving from Boston just in time to help with the last load and take one last look around the classroom. Mary and I have been through this sort of thing before, several times, but it's never easy. It usually ends with one of us echoing Captain Kirk's ultimate line in The City on the Edge of Forever.

It would have been nice if someone at least had said thank you for your 22 years of service, for your thousand acts of kindness, for all the extra hours put in helping with fundraisers and clipping coupons, for the sacrifices you made financially and career-wise for the greater glory of God, for all the time, talent and treasure you put in for your parish and your school.

But it was not to be. There will be no farewell parties, no honors bestowed, just drop your key in the lock box when you're done, and of course orders to the faculty not to ask any questions or ever mention it.

Still, the influence a teacher has on her students never stops, and I just know that for the rest of our lives people who are total strangers to me will keep running up to her and giving her big hugs and chattering away about how she is just the BEST TEACHER I EVER HAD and there will be tears and laughter and I'll be standing in the background over and over and over being terribly, terribly annoyed.

And so very, very proud.

Father Rutler Says . . .

2013-05-12T22:08:12Z

FROM THE PASTOR
May 12, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler

Following Pentecost, the Apostles discussed whether someone had to become a Jew to be a Christian. It seems an odd problem for us today, but everything was new then, and even the term “Christian” was not used until a significant number of believers had been baptized in Antioch, a city in Turkey near the modern city of Antakya. Christ (the name is a Greek form of “Messiah”) sent his followers out to convert “all nations,” and he promised that the Holy Spirit would show them what to do.

   After the Holy Spirit came down on the Apostles at Pentecost, the prime question of Judaic observance was debated. Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem and consulted with the other Apostles. This was a hint of how the Church was to resolve matters in great Councils. Given the stolid temperament and vivid personalities of the Apostles, the term “debated” might be an understatement. But they remembered that the Risen Lord had promised that his “Paraclete” would guide them. Only rarely does ancient Greek use that term, as when the orator Demosthenes used it for a sort of legal advocate, and not necessarily an ethical one at that. But Christ makes it mean the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. How the Apostles were helped by this divine Helper is not said, but they sent their decision to the scattered Christians, beginning with the words “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us.”

   To claim private guidance from the Holy Spirit that departs from what has inspired the collective agreement of the successors of the Apostles, would be to confuse personal opinion with divine truth. But the Holy Spirit does help us in the ways of truth every day. Sometimes he even works through children: “. . . and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). The birth of a child may convert a parent to more intense faith, or a child's First Communion may inspire a young father to return to Confession. The Holy Spirit works through encounters that are often unnoticed. Yogi Berra, not to be underestimated as a philosopher, said, “Some things are just too coincidental to be a coincidence.”

   Our Lord requires of us only “meekness” to be helped by the Holy Spirit. The spiritually “meek” are not milquetoasts, or spineless wimps. The Greek praus for “meek” means controlled strength, a suppleness like that of an athlete. Without praus, a surfer would stand stiff and soon fall off the surfboard, and a boxer would be knocked out with the first punch without agile footwork. God calls the arrogant, who will not bend their opinions to his truth, a “stiff-necked people” (Exodus 32:9). Arrogance, as the opposite of meekness, is spiritual arthritis. Get rid of that moral stiffness, and then “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you” (John 14:26).

TSWNN May 3, 2013 First Hour

2013-05-04T13:49:57Z

TSWNN May 3, 2013 First Hour | The Show With No Name:

Bob’s new book, Where Do We Find Such Men, is considered, along with other aspects of World War II.

Father Rutler Says . . .

2013-05-04T11:49:16Z

FROM THE PASTOR
May 5, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler

Saint Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) was a man of many parts: scholar, mystic, poet, traveler, diplomat, debater, cardinal and even something of a scientist, as is evident in his exchanges with Galileo. He had the fine title of Professor of Controversial Theology at the Roman College, but that is a poor translation of what is known as “apologetics,” which means explaining something to doubters. His correspondence with the English king, James I, is a good example of how to do this and is a model for explaining the mystery of the Catholic Church to those in our worldly culture who imagine the Church to be just a human institution, and a regressive one at that.

The saint lists some fifteen “marks” of the Church’s supernatural character. One of these is the “unhappy end” of those who fight against her. History is littered with the detritus of figures great and small who took arms, physical and moral, against the Church. Some of the most notorious are embalmed and, ironically, on display in the lands they ruined, while the tomb of Christ is empty. Bellarmine did not gloat over this. His was not the happiness which Ambrose Bierce defined in his Devil's Dictionary of 1911 as “an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.” The saint spent his life trying to save the Church's enemies from an unhappy end. He wanted others to share in that other mark of the Church: the “temporal peace and earthly happiness of those who live by the Church’s teaching and defend her interests.” In his method of explaining the Church, Bellarmine sounds like Blessed Teresa of Calcutta who said, “People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.”

In the “pursuit of happiness” — which even our Declaration of Independence names as a natural right — the Church is not a casual option. Christ is the source and goal of true happiness. Pope Francis recently said, “No one comes to Christ without the Church.” Christ is the Bridegroom, and the Church is his Bride. To want Christ without the Church is like the corrupting conceit of cohabitation before marriage. Just as bulimia is an eating disorder, so conjugal life outside matrimony is a love disorder. The joy promised by our Lord is through, and not despite, full union with the Church which is his body.

The month of May especially celebrates Christ's mother as the Mother of the Church, a title used by Saint Ambrose and conferred officially by the Second Vatican Council. As Blessed John Paul II preached: “Mary embraces each and every one in the Church, and embraces each and every one through the Church.” All the sorrows of a perplexed world turn to joy through the mystery of the Church for the same reason hers did: “The Lord has risen as he promised.”

WHERE DO WE FIND SUCH MEN?

2013-05-03T12:42:06Z

P R E S S R E L E A S E

WHERE DO WE FIND SUCH MEN?

Can one small community win a world war single-handedly? You'll begin to wonder after reading Robert N. Going's latest book, Where Do We Find Such Men?, published May 2, 2013.

The general who supplies the American forces in Europe, the private who leads a company of POWs to freedom, the spunky heiress who becomes a spy, the dimple-chinned ensign who becomes a movie star, the doctor who sees through Rudolph Hess, the soccer team heard round the world, the airplane mechanic at Hickam Field, the National Guard boys who become men on Saipan, the grocer's son in the first wave on Omaha Beach, the Navy flier who opens the air field on Guadalcanal,the circus act that produces seven fighting men from the same family; all these and more do their part to win World War II, and all spring from the same hero-producing environs of Amsterdam, New York.

Where Do We Find Such Men? Contains dozens of stories of Amsterdam in World War II, from the Big Parade of October 23, 1940 when the Boys of Company G, the local National Guard Unit, marched off for one year of federal service that lasted until late 1945, to the last funeral of a local soldier killed in the war (in 1991).

Along the way you'll meet Bill Hasenfuss and his family. Bill is killed on December 7, 1941 at Hickam Field, Territory of Hawaii. You'll read major excerpts from the wartime diary of Edward T. Hartigan, serving with Merrill's Marauders in India, and witness the limitless courage of Chaplain Anthony Sidoti.

Heroes on and off the playing field, the Bigelow Sanford Uniteds Soccer Club sends members to all parts of the world: from Alaska to North Africa, Italy, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and every island in the Pacific and all the way to Nagasaki, bringing home bushel baskets of medals.

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And then there's Private First Class Jack Blanchfield, who at age 20 ends up commanding a company of prisoners of war who outwit their Nazi captors, then make a daring and successful escape deep behind enemy lines.

And Gertrude Sanford Legendre, heiress of a great carpet fortune, who becomes a spy and is captured by the enemy.

You'll follow Company G every step of the way through the battles of Saipan and Okinawa, and crawl through Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima with our fighting Marines. You'll see what 18 year old Richard Dantini saw when the ramp dropped open on Omaha Beach. You'll follow the antic adventures of Malcolm Tomlinson and friends with their four D-Day landings, and individual stories of survival and courage from sunken ships to downed airplanes, and witness the Battle of Leyte Gulf from the perspective of a virtually armor-free escort carrier facing the might of the Japanese fleet.

And you'll hear from Dr. Rene Juchli, the Amsterdam physician who treats the most notorious war criminals of World War II, or any other time.

There aren't too many of these folks left. It's time we said thank you.

Where Do We Find Such Men? will make sure they are never forgotten.

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Robert N. Going is a graduate of St. Mary's Institute and Bishop Scully High School in Amsterdam, NY. He received his BA degree from the State University of New York at Albany in 1973 where he majored in History. After being awarded a Juris Doctor degree from Albany Law School in 1979 he entered the practice of law.

He is the author of several books, including a companion to this one, Honor Roll: The World War II Dead of Amsterdam, NY; a murder mystery, The Evil Has Landed; and a collection of essays, The Judge Report: Musings of a Conservative Republican Pro-Life Catholic Red Sox Fanatic Currently Hiding Out in Amsterdam, NY USA.

He remains in Amsterdam with his wife Mary. They have four accomplished children and a sweet granddaughter.

Where Do We Find Such Men? Is available through Amazon.com and will be retailed locally through Old Peddler's Wagon, The Book Hound and the Walter Elwood Museum.

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Where Do We Find Such Men? By Robert N. Going

Publication Date: May 02 2013

ISBN/EAN13:: 1438288840 / 9781438288840
Page Count:: 376
Binding Type:: US Trade Paper
Trim Size:: 6" x 9"
Language:: English
Color:: Black and White
Related Categories:: History / Military / World War II

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Father Rutler Says . . .

2013-04-28T04:56:44Z

FROM THE PASTOR
April 28, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler

Liturgical readings in the Easter season often couple the Book of the Acts of the Apostles with the Book of Revelation. They are so different that at first you might think it is like putting a history of Dutch New Amsterdam alongside a science fiction novel. The Acts seem so human, with charming details, such as the fine needlework done by Dorcas (Acts 9:36-42). There is none of that in the Revelation of St. John. But think again: Dorcas the seamstress was raised from the dead. That is as astonishing as St. John’s descriptions of Heaven, which — since they are being filtered from eternity into time — seem almost like hallucinations.

   St. John was not given to fantasizing, but he was shown truths to which the most bizarre fantasies compare only as frail shadows. The very practical historical details in the Book of Acts are but the other side of the coin of the great mysteries privileged to St. John. They are clues to a more solid world than this perishable one, in which mortal eyes can only see “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). There is a biological parallel of this in the way a baby can see only shades of gray at birth, with between 20/200 and 20/400 vision. After three months, however, the baby can recognize faces even at a distance and can tell bright colors. In Heaven there are no pastels, but all is bright, like the primary colors of a “rainbow shining through an emerald” (Revelation 4:3). If St. John’s description seems confused, it is because human words cannot diagram the grammar of Heaven.

   Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, described education as something like bringing eternal wisdom out from latency into articulate consciousness. A new baby can look very old, and Socrates sensed that the life of this little one was coaxed from eternity into this mortal world. The teacher, acting as a midwife (maieutikos) lets hidden knowledge breathe.

   Having come down from Heaven, Jesus shot his sharpest language at those who would harm the littlest children, whose lives are endowed from Heaven. Even selfish people with a shred of conscience need verbal fig leaves, euphemisms, to cover their shame when they sanction unholy acts against life. Sometimes they call babies killed in “partial-birth” abortions “viable fetuses.” On April 18, The New York Times referred to newborn babies murdered by an abortionist as “neonates.” You might then call Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents, the Termination of the Neonates. But the same issue of that newspaper, in an article on page 24 about diaper training, spoke of “babies” as did an Op-Ed essay on gun control.

   Our Lord knows more about it than we do, and that is why he said: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 18:10).

THE BOOK

2013-04-27T07:33:34Z

Where Do We Find Such Men?, my history of Amsterdam in World War II, is finished and will be available shortly, hopefully in time for Memorial Day. Watch this spot for details!

TSWNN April 26, 2013 Second Hour

2013-04-27T07:30:51Z

TSWNN April 26, 2013 Second Hour | The Show With No Name:

A salute to Carol Burnett on her 80th birthday, and to Oklahoma! on its 70th. How about those Red Sox? Where Do We Find Such Menis finished and will be published shortly. Plus a look back at George W. Bush.

TSWNN April 26, 2013 First Hour

2013-04-27T07:29:58Z

TSWNN April 26, 2013 First Hour | The Show With No Name:

Remembering Dick Stark and Ann Kolodziej; Seriously, do we need a municipal bus system at that price? Or a 16 and a half million dollar overlook whose view will not be as good as the overlook we already have a football field east? Chiming in on the move to eliminate the elected city controller. How about that school budget and the new teacher contracts? (Gavin is on the hot seat.)Plus a Boston update.

Father Rutler Says . . .

2013-04-21T03:53:49Z

FROM THE PASTOR
April 21, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler

Our Risen Lord told Peter, “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15-17) That has been the happy burden of all Peter's successors, the popes, and of all who are baptized into Christ. The Holy Church has recently begun the process for the possible canonization of Father Emil Kapaun, a priest born in Kansas, whose heroic efforts to care for the flock as a military chaplain were recognized on April 11, when he was given posthumously the Medal of Honor. The citation described his “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” He died in a Chinese Communist prison camp in North Korea where he fed and nursed his starving fellow soldiers, foraging by night, finding only grass and bird seed. More than that, Fr. Kapaun managed to nourish his impoverished flock with the Sacraments.

   On the day of the Medal of Honor ceremony in the White House, the abortionist Kermit Gosnell was on trial in Philadelphia, charged on eight counts of murder, including one adult and seven newborn infants who had survived their abortions. One of his “medical” assistants had already testified to having “snipped the spines” of more than a hundred babies. The silence of much of the media was wordlessly portrayed by a photograph of a nearly vacant press section at the courthouse. Quite obviously, many are made uncomfortable by the way that this case represents the logical denouement of the perverse logic of our “Culture of Death” ever since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. What happened in Gosnell’s house of horrors has in fact been defended theoretically by some “ethicists” who hold positions in our universities, and many of our nation’s highest officials have defended “partial-birth abortion.”

   The misuse of reason can rationalize contempt for life, just as happened in the Weimar Republic when the jurist Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche published their defense of killing unwanted people: Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (“Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living”). Binding died in 1920 when the book was published, but Hoche lived until 1943 after privately objecting to the “euthanizing” of one of his own relatives by the Nazis who had read his book.

   As man has a free will, he is free to feed the littlest lambs or to cut their throats, to tend the sheep or to kill them, to be a Father Kapaun or a Doctor Gosnell. Society is also free to redefine reality, to contracept life, and to redefine marriage in terms of civil rights rather than natural law, and to justify the killing of the innocent as a “personal choice.” Choices have consequences, and bad choices have bad consequences. When the equivalent of the media in Old Jerusalem, “the council and all the senate of Israel,” ordered Peter and the apostles to be silent, they replied, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Father Rutler Says . . .

2013-04-14T02:15:37Z

FROM THE PASTOR
April 14, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler

This past week I remembered at the altar my maternal grandmother on what would have been her one hundred and twenty-eighth birthday. Her name was Emma, just like the Queen of Hawaii who was still alive at the time of her birth, as were Ulysses S. Grant, Victor Hugo, and Cardinal Newman. It does seem long ago, but things my grandmother taught me are still fresh in my memory.

   Only about half that length of time separated the Resurrection of Jesus from the death of the Apostle John, who remembered “that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched” (1 John 1:1).

   Saint Paul also writes of his encounter with the Risen Lord as though it were just yesterday, because the Resurrection was what animated him: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). This explains why he never quotes Jesus in any of his letters, nor does he refer to any of the biographical details of the Lord’s life or any of his parables or miracles. All those were prelude to the all-important Resurrection.

   Just as our Lord commissioned the Apostles to proclaim his triumph, so we have an urgent summons to do that today, for never has there been so much evil alive in the world, and so much ignorance about the Resurrection. The New York Times outdid its reputation for illiteracy about the Faith by publishing a correction: “An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the Christian holiday of Easter. It is the celebration of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, not his resurrection into heaven.” On April 5, 1933, the same newspaper’s Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, denied the deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainians by Stalin when he wrote: “. . . the food shortage as a whole is less grave than was believed — or, if not, at least distribution has greatly improved, which comes to the same thing for practical purposes.” That was the same number of years ago from us now as the Resurrection was from St. John’s death.

   The Holy Spirit is more accurate than the editors of The New York Times and has never had to publish a correction of what happed on Easter. Quite the opposite, the Sabbath was changed to Sunday in celebration of the Resurrection, and saints ever since have broadcast what happened. “Christ died for us all so that being alive should no longer mean living with our own life, but with his life, who died for us and has risen again. And therefore, henceforward, we do not think of anybody in a merely human fashion; even if we used to think of Christ in a human fashion, we do so no longer. It follows, in fact, that when a man has become a new creature in Christ, his old life has disappeared; everything has become new about him” (2 Corinthians 5:15-17).

TSWNN April 12, 2013 Second Hour

2013-04-13T02:01:42Z

TSWNN April 12, 2013 Second Hour | The Show With No Name:

Everyone’s talking about violence on the baseball field, but why is the mainstream media deadly silent about the violence in that Philadelphia Abortuary?

TSWNN April 12, 2013 First Hour

2013-04-12T20:54:59Z

TSWNN April 12, 2013 First Hour | The Show With No Name:

Does the Town of Amsterdam Supervisor know how to keep books? Is Patsy Baia’s lawsuit against the city and county worth the toilet paper it’s written on? Is nepotism a better excuse than politics? These and more questions answered definitively on The Show With No Name.

Father Rutler Says . . .

2013-04-07T22:13:32Z

FROM THE PASTOR
April 7, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler

In the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, our Lord appeared to numerous individuals and to various groups, including some five hundred on one occasion, and at last to the group who witnessed his ascent to glory in a cloud of light. A forensic investigator would logically ask why he did not appear to those who had crucified him, to those who had plotted against him, and to Pontius Pilate. Napoleon, in an amalgamation of pragmatism, cynicism and fascination, is said to have remarked that Jesus could have converted the whole Empire had he appeared from the dead in front of Caesar in the Roman Forum.

   God’s ways are not our ways, and were it otherwise, there would have been no Holy Passion. But the same Saint Peter who had been appalled that Christ must die on the cross, was the first to enter the empty tomb and then proclaimed on Pentecost that he and others had seen the Lord. The question lingers though, about why Christ did not stun his enemies with his victory. Reports of his resurrection did cause some panic among the Sanhedrin and others, and the soldiers feared they might be to blame for having been neglectful watchmen, but none of the chief players in this greatest of all dramas, as far as we know, had any encounter with the Risen Christ. One tradition holds that Pontius Pilate spent his last days wandering in exile, haunted because he could not be inspired.

   As usual, the fertile mind of John Henry Newman proposes that that Christ did not show himself to all people, because appearing only to chosen witnesses “was the most effectual means of propagating His religion through the world.” Had his murderers seen him, they would have reacted with “sudden fears, sudden contrition, sudden earnestness, sudden resolves, which disappear suddenly.” By a strategy more pragmatic than any general’s, Christ comforted, encouraged and prepared a few to convert the many, for “Many are called, but few are chosen.” So Newman says, “Doubtless, much may be undone by the many, but nothing is done except by those who are specially trained for action.”

   Many saw Christ resuscitate the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Nain, to no lasting effect, for then as now, excitement is momentary and even threatening: the raising of Lazarus was what finally compelled the authorities to kill Jesus. Spectacles are not divine graces, and while false Messiahs can give people a thrill, only the true Messiah can give grace. “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

   Peter, the chief witness, was trained the hard way through his own denials and repentance, and he continues to confirm others in the Faith through his apostolic successors: “This is a cause of great joy for you” (1 Peter 1:6).

TSWNN April 5, 2013 Second Hour

2013-04-06T03:52:47Z

TSWNN April 5, 2013 Second Hour | The Show With No Name:

← TSWNN April 5, 2013 First Hour
TSWNN April 5, 2013 Second Hour
Posted on April 5, 2013 by rgoing

School district updates, common council updates. Should we be looking for a more modern hotel for Amsterdam? The Recorder editorialist weighs in.

TSWNN April 5, 2013 First Hour

2013-04-05T21:31:11Z

TSWNN April 5, 2013 First Hour | The Show With No Name:

Getting ready to expand our audience back into radio, warming up with baseball. Are the Red Sox doomed now that they’ve lost a game? How about that Syracuse defense! Gavin becomes a grandfather! A favorable review of Easter Dinner at Lanzi’s on the Lake! Plus the official granddaughter of The Show With No Name drops in and out. And other stuff.

Fulton Sheen Comes to Amsterdam

2013-04-05T01:09:12Z

[I'm at the point where I'm deciding that there isn't room in my book, Where Do We Find Such Men, for everything, so every now and then I'll be sharing a story that didn't make the cut, for continuity reasons, primarily. And why not start with the guy who told Milton Berle, "Your sponsor was the Texaco Star. Mine was Superstar."]

Amsterdam had no shortage of famous personages dropping by in those days. Fulton J. Sheen, then a Monsignor and in his thirteenth year as a radio priest, made his first of two war-time appearances on May 26, 1942. The future EMMY (TM) Award winner (“I'd like to thank my writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John”) and candidate for sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church, spoke under the auspices of St. Mary's Hospital Auxiliary at the Junior High School auditorium with the theme, “What Are We Fighting For.”

We are fighting for a nobler cause than we know; we are fighting for a nobler cause than we deserve. Not one of the United Nations [the term then in use to represent the Allies] has expressed the war cause better than Hitler himself, who said, “Where there is an idea, there is a front, where there is a front, there is a struggle. This is the battle between the Cross and the Sword, and we carry the sword.”

Sheen's talk contained a powerful review of the political, economic and ideological struggles of the preceding centuries. He saw the war as incidental to the ongoing revolution. He warned that Russia is on our side in the war, but not on our side in the revolution that will outlast the war. The ideologies of the revolution had three aspects: the worthlessness of the individual, the totalitarian theory and the pagan ideology of evil as a method to an end. Sheen then ripped each apart, castigating Marx, Nietzsche and the hero-worship of Wagnerian opera.

How will these forces be met? Not by war, for you can never defeat an idea by force; you can only defeat an idea with an idea. When will we be victorious? When we of the United Nations begin to build up an idea of a new order. We ought to proclaim that we are not intending to keep things as they are. We must offer an idea of justice, based upon justice and morality under God. Ours is the indifference of a democracy. We lack the offensive of a great idea.

What is it that makes us illiterate? It is the philosophy of our educators. We cannot send our boys into foreign fields to die for Truth when we have teachers at home who say there is no truth. If, as they say, there is no guilt and no sin, how then can Hitler be wrong and we be right?

.

When Men Were Men

2013-04-02T12:31:47Z

During yesterday's opening day massacre of the Yankees by the Red Sox, the YES network guys were forced to do a lot of back-filling to prevent three and a half hours of dead air, and at one point reached back into franchise history and mentioned "Happy Jack" Chesbro, who played with the New York Highlanders back in the olden days and later entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946.

Back when men were men, in 1904, Chesbro set "modern era" records in several categories: 51 starts, 48 complete games and 41 wins. A classic spit-baller, he could hardly be touched.

But one place he just couldn't win a game was Amsterdam, NY.

Back in 1895 Chesbro had been pitching for Johnstown in the New York State League (a professional league which folded that same year) and the Amsterdam Carpet Tacks had his number. But it's not like he rolled over and played dead. One of the contests, a duel with Amsterdam hurler Chauncey Baldwin, went into extra innings. Chesbro sprained his ankle early in the game, but stayed in. He took his shoe off and finished the game barefoot.

St. John Chrysostom Says . . .

2013-03-31T20:25:21Z

The Easter Sermon of
John Chrysostom
Bishop of Constantinople (c. A.D. 400)

Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God? Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival! Is there anyone who is a grateful servant? Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary with fasting? Let them now receive their wages! If any have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward; if any have come after the third hour, let him with gratitude join in the Feast! And he that arrived after the sixth hour, let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss. And if any delayed until the ninth hour, let him not hesitate; but let him come too. And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, as well as to him that toiled from the first. To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows. He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor. The deed He honors and the intention He commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord! First and last alike receive your reward; rich and poor, rejoice together! Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not, rejoice today for the Table is richly laden! Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one. Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith. Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Death of Our Saviour has set us free. He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when He descended into it. He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh. Isaiah foretold this when he said, “You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below.”

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar because it is mocked. It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed. It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated. It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive. Hell took a body, and discovered God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, O death, are annihilated! Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down! Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is Risen, and life is liberated! Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead; for Christ having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

Father Rutler Says . . .

2013-03-24T20:36:28Z

FROM THE PASTOR
March 24, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler

The Great Week is here, putting into perspective each day of every week. Following the events of Christ’s Passion expands our biological existence into a life of hope. The solemn ceremonies are like the axle in a wheel, and without this axle the year spins out of control. Every day of our lives has its Good Friday moments in minuscule and its Resurrection moments in majuscule. Mortal life, with all its trials, lived as a daily walk toward eternal life with Christ who is Love, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7).

   The drama of Holy Week is the reverse of theatrics, for the audience is the cast, and the play is the real thing. Just as the Eucharist is the real presence of Christ, and not a reverie, so these holy days pull us into the actions that give life to a tired world. Without penance, fasting and prayer to prepare us, we would be like the spectators at the foot of the Cross and like those to whom the Risen Lord did not appear during the forty days after the Resurrection.

   Because these ceremonies reveal reality, they are evangelical: no one can effectively share in them without helping others to encounter them. No Christian can live alone with Christ, for he who asked “where are the others?” will keep asking if you have brought anyone else with you.

   Pope Francis has taken up the Year of Faith initiated by Benedict XVI, and lasting through November 24 of this year, to bring Christ to those who have never known him, and to those whose Christian roots have withered in the aridity of secularism. St. Francis of Assisi is a model of the “New Evangelization” in many ways, such as his meeting, along with Brother Illuminatus in 1219, with Saladin’s nephew, Malik-al-Kamil, in Egypt. This Sunni Muslim sultan had beheaded about a hundred Christian knights after the Battle of Damietta. The two friars risked their lives to meet with him and were tortured before being brought before him.

   St. Bonaventure records: “The sultan asked them by whom and why and in what capacity they had been sent, and how they got there; but Francis replied that they had been sent by God, not by men, to show him and his subjects the way of salvation and proclaim the truth of the Gospel message. When the sultan saw his enthusiasm and courage, he listened to him willingly and pressed him to stay with him.” One pious but fragile tradition holds that later on the sultan was secretly baptized. We do know that Francis returned with the sultan’s gift of an ivory horn which he used for calling his friars to prayer.

   When our bells ring out on Easter, they will summon the faithful, and the faithful will show their faith by bringing others to meet the Risen Lord.

TSWNN March 22, 2013 First Hour

2013-03-23T12:44:42Z

TSWNN March 22, 2013 First Hour | The Show With No Name:

An enormously important, breathtaking announcement is made about The Show With No Name! BACK TO THE FUTURE!!

Father Rutler Says . . .

2013-03-17T22:37:07Z

FROM THE PASTOR
March 17, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler

The rabbis talking with the twelve-year-old Jesus about the Torah must have thought that he was a child prodigy. There have been such, and as a proud pastor I delight in the extraordinary skills of so many of the children in our parish, so adept at piano and violin and so forth. “Prodigy” means a sign or a gift. Betraying a prejudice, I’d propose that in addition to the five ways St. Thomas Aquinas proved the existence of God from natural evidence, prodigious Mozart would be a sixth. You cannot compose a symphony at the age of eight and ascribe it just to chemistry or biology.

   A nice thing about Mozart is that he was nice. People liked him, and he liked them, and he did not storm about like the self-styled geniuses of the romantic period a couple of generations later. He thought of himself as a craftsman who enjoyed his craft. Simple as that. But he never produced anything second rate, which is why I propose him as proof that there exists a God who does great things through his creatures. Mozart said that music is not in the notes but in the silence between the notes. That might sound like a nice throwaway line, but he meant it, and his music is proof. So it is with our daily lives: God is to be heard in the silent spaces between all that we say and do.

   Jesus cannot be filed away in the category of child prodigies. He is the source of all prodigy. At the age of twelve in the Temple, he called it his “Father’s house.” In him was more than genius. It is true that great artists, like Jesus himself, give the impression that what they do is effortless. The Latin phrase ars est celare artem means that the essence of art is to give the impression that it is easy. Great opera singers would have you think that their sounds are effortless. Compare that with the rock singers who affect an air of pain when they scream into sound amplifiers, as though they (and not their listeners) were enduring some form of torture. It is their attempt to make you think that their artlessness is art.

   In the sixteenth century, Baldassare Castiglione coined the term sprezzatura for affected nonchalance, or deliberate casualness. But there was more than that in the miracles of Christ. There were times when the disciples saw the anguish his purity endured in a broken world, as when he groaned before he raised Lazarus from the dead. Prodigies receive their talent from God. Christ is God himself. Mozart understood that and said: “It is a great consolation for me to remember that the Lord to whom I had drawn near in humble and childlike faith, has suffered and died for me, and that He will look on me in love and compassion.”

Karol Krajewski, RIP

2013-03-12T21:46:00Z

We invited Karol and Virginia Krajewski to our wedding back in 1978, but they declined as they had their own vacation scheduled. We told no one of our honeymoon plans, not even the location (Cape May, NJ), let alone the hotel (the La Mer, on a two inch wide strip of beach about a mile's walk from the somewhat wider town beach). Imagine our surprise, then, to learn the Krajewskis had booked the same hotel. As it happens, we missed each other by a couple of hours. They would have been across the hall.

A life-long Democrat, Karol and I rarely supported the same candidates. He voted against me for City Clerk in 1974 on what ended up a 4-4 tie. I backed the two guys who beat him to interrupt his 22 years of service on the Amsterdam Common Council, famed maverick Marshall Lech and noted presidential historian David Pietrusza.

In those days, young turk that I was, I attended nearly all the Common Council meetings, until law school and marriage changed my priorities. The aldermen, eight back then, argued and fought and maneuvered and even engaged in mockery and name calling. And then, when the meeting ended, they'd all go out for a bite and a brew together. They were one big happy family off-camera, and took care of each other.

Which is how I came to like Karol. It almost didn't seem to matter what we did to him, he'd always come back with a smile and a "You guys!" In his eleven terms in office, he played the political game as well as anyone, but in the end, the interests of the city of Amsterdam always came first. His word was always good, which is how I knew there was no way he'd ever vote for me for City Clerk.

Even while alderman, but especially in his retirement, he took loving care of the 4th Ward Veterans Memorial that he helped establish when the old one in the East End got trampled with progress. A veteran of World War II himself, he rates a small passage in my upcoming book Where Do We Find Such Men? in a chapter on the Okinawa campaign:

The USS Nevada, a veteran ship commissioned in 1916, sunk at Pearl Harbor and raised to fight again, providing support for the landings at Attu in the Aleutians, the Normandy invasion and the D-Day landings in southern France in June and August of 1944, and the Iwo Jima operation, gets hit by a kamikaze and takes five hits from a shore battery on March 27, 1945. Amsterdam's Seaman First Class Karol Krajewski is aboard. The dead include twelve enlisted men and one officer; another 65 wounded.
They have the Nevada back in action within four hours.

In his retirement he took up carpentry, hand-making hundreds of JESUS blocks. He had a trunkful of them, and gave them away in bulk. I left one behind for my successor as corporation counsel.

A worthy opponent, and a good guy. And a good friend. Rest in peace.

Father Rutler Says . . .

2013-03-10T21:48:27Z

FROM THE PASTOR
March 10, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler

“What if?” is a simple game, also known as counterfactualism, in which one speculates as to what might have happened if events had taken a different turn. What would have happened if Caesar had not crossed the Rubicon, or if Lenin had been prevented from re-entering Russia? Such conjecture resembles what a computerized generation has come to call “virtual reality.” What is almost real is definitely not real and may lapse into nothing more than daydreaming, but speculating about the “What if” can help us understand the present.

   This requires a mind willing to exercise itself, and a knowledge of history, so it is not very popular in many quarters. Winston Churchill may have over-exercised his mind when he whimsically wrote an essay titled, “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg.” And he enjoyed being able to correct President Roosevelt who thought the battle took place in 1864. We might ask: “What if there had been no Black Death? . . . if Henry VIII had stayed Catholic? . . . if Napoleon had not lost at Waterloo? . . . if the scholars at Bletchley Park had not cracked the German code?”

   Of course, we cannot go “back to the future.” The past cannot be altered, and while the future can be shaped, it cannot be stopped. We are living proof of that, having once been the future. For those who play “what if,” the problem, and blessing, with the Incarnation is that eternity and time intersected. Jesus never had to speculate about how things might have ended up differently, because to the bewilderment of everyone, even his own apostles, he knew that all things had been planned and that his “hour” had come. What if Jesus had never been born? That is a question asked only because he rose from the dead. Otherwise, his birth would have been forgotten along with all the others once inscribed on the census rolls in Bethlehem. But what if there had been no Resurrection? There would be no eternal bliss, no saints, no sacraments, and daily life would be worse than before the Resurrection: the cruelty of old paganism would by now have turned the whole world into something like North Korea, there would be no benign science, and the best moral guides would be like the Cynics and Stoics, but without their remnant virtues.

   John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, “For of all sad words of tongue or pen / The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’” But that is the sadness of dreamers, not saints. Like Saint Anselm, who asked, “Cur Deus Homo?” – Why the God-Man? – the saints do not bother with “What if” but only ask: “What are we going to do about it?”

   “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). While our culture increasingly is sinking into the misery of living as if he had never been, those who prefer reality rather than its imitation, say “Laetare! Rejoice!”