Debra Dickerson and Erroll McDonald
Catholic? Need Papers To Prove It
By Erroll McDonald
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2000, at 4:51 PM ETWhat is especially rich about the antiquarian outrageousness of the Vatican pronouncement is that few, if any, are the world and religious leaders who will vigorously denounce it for the madness that it is. Yo, is that Joe Lieberman I hear? No couldn't be, there are too many Catholic voters in America and I believe an election is in the offing. Let us also not forget that Città del Vaticano is an independent state, advancing its perverse and self-sustaining ideology. When the Ayatollah Khomeini came out of this bag people opened up a can of whupass on him.
These people never stop, and they never will. A decade ago, because I was raised so-called Catholic (not through any choice of my own) and my fiancee was herself a Polish Catholic, we approached various Catholic churches in New York City about getting married. None would have us. The line was always the same: "You say you're Catholic, but hey, where are your papers. Baby, we need proof." It was of no avail to suggest to them that since both my wife and I immigrated to America when we were children, if any papers did exist they might be difficult to come by. These priests would have none of it. Their point? Try some other religion or denomination 'cause we don't play. My wife and I said to hell with this an ended up getting married at the Riverside Church--interdenominational, interracial, inter alia, whatever--a monument to the "so-called theology of religious pluralism" if there ever was one. Little did we know that we were putting ourselves in "a gravely deficient situation." That is, until ... when my wife and I sought to baptize our first-born, we approached an Upper East Side Catholic church (we're immigrants; we don't play either, we won't stop either). When the priest asked where we were married and we told him, the red-faced drunk was aghast, became highly suspicious, and admonished us to have our marriage "regularized" (his word). He would perform the baptism only on that promise, providing, of course, that the requisite envelope with the $200 donation was subtly and deftly handed over. And, yes, he gave us useful advice for the future: If you live on the West Side (as my wife and I do) and need a Catholic service performed on the East Side, you must get permission from your church; if, however, you live on the East Side (where the big money is), all Catholic churches throughout the city (providing you're even vaguely Catholic) are at your service no questions asked.
What foul spiritual corruption!
Catholic? Need Papers To Prove It
By Erroll McDonald
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2000, at 4:51 PM ETDebra Dickerson is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a columnist for Beliefnet.com. Her memoir, An American Story
, will be published this month (click here to buy it). Erroll McDonald is an editor at Pantheon Books. Reader Comments from The Fray:
Indian gaming may seem like a form of reparations in our tort-minded culture, but this is a false analogy. Indians are permitted to operate casinos because they have sovereignty over their reservations by treaties signed in the preceding centuries. When the federal courts ruled that states could not bar tribes from running casinos, states negotiated agreements with them regulating their operation (restricting alcohol, for example). Indian gaming, fishing rights, and sales tax exemptions are not gifts of guilty white liberals. They are an acknowledgement of legal obligations from another era.
--Andrew W.Cohen
(To reply, click
here.)
I believe the best reparations would be putting forth the effort to treat Black Americans and Indians with the respect and equality human beings deserve. What good would money and property do, when white folks can still treat Black Americans and Indians as less than human, therefore less than equal? What would I, a Black American, rather have: 40 acres and a mule, or to be treated and given as much respect and equality is my white brother and sisters? Forget the money and the property, give me my equality and my respect. That is the best reparation any oppressed people can ask for.
--philiagoddess
(To reply, click
here.)
The purpose of reparations is justice. The purpose of group reparations (vs. individual) is approximate justice. So it is necessary to decide how approximate we wish our justice to be. I believe that reparations for the dead (eg slaves) paid to their remote descendants is too crude. However, after slavery there was still a long-term injustice towards blacks: Jim Crow. This depressed the wages of Afro-Americans. Some of these victims are still alive. Since they would be mostly retired now, I suggest compensation through the Social Security system. This could be done in many ways, for example by adjusting the probability distribution of wages of blacks to mirror that of whites (on a year-by-year basis, up to some cutoff date), and then using that adjustment to adjust individual wage histories, and so finally increase Social Security payments.
--Bob Cox
(To reply, click
here.)
We do owe the black people. The whole country does, because we took their share of work for building this country up, for free, and on top we dragged them through the hell of slavery, and broken families, and constant humiliation. And even now 140 years after the Civil War, the prejudice continues. If we inherited all the good stuff from our predecessors in this country, we also inherited their debts. And the debt to the black people still needs to be paid.
--Amyntas
(To reply, click
here.)
Several questions:
1)If we're starting with home-grown folks, should we be planning to collect reparations from black slave owners' descendants?
2) Would you prefer African-Americans have quasi-sovereign nations to live on like Native Americans tribes, and thus be immune (to a large extent) from the state and federal government?
3) Did Bill Clinton oppose the war before or after he signed up for ROTC, and then dropped out once he realized he might get drafted?
4) Was Gore struggling along as a pauper while Bush was living high with his family's money?
--MRB
(To reply, click
here.)
Notes from the Fray Editor: Debra Dickerson does a splendid job of explaining The Fray. (In fact, our job--thanks Debra.) This is the post she mentions about the National Review. Views on reparations can be found all over The Fray, and we picked out some of what we hope she will think the more intelligent and thoughtful ones, above. And WillV liked Ms Dickerson's description of the shooting--Tuesday-- so much he thought she should be be hired by Slate to write a cops and crime column.
What did you think of this article?
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Reader Comments from The Fray:
Indian gaming may seem like a form of reparations in our tort-minded culture, but this is a false analogy. Indians are permitted to operate casinos because they have sovereignty over their reservations by treaties signed in the preceding centuries. When the federal courts ruled that states could not bar tribes from running casinos, states negotiated agreements with them regulating their operation (restricting alcohol, for example). Indian gaming, fishing rights, and sales tax exemptions are not gifts of guilty white liberals. They are an acknowledgement of legal obligations from another era.
--Andrew W.Cohen
(To reply, click here.)
I believe the best reparations would be putting forth the effort to treat Black Americans and Indians with the respect and equality human beings deserve. What good would money and property do, when white folks can still treat Black Americans and Indians as less than human, therefore less than equal? What would I, a Black American, rather have: 40 acres and a mule, or to be treated and given as much respect and equality is my white brother and sisters? Forget the money and the property, give me my equality and my respect. That is the best reparation any oppressed people can ask for.
--philiagoddess
(To reply, click here.)
The purpose of reparations is justice. The purpose of group reparations (vs. individual) is approximate justice. So it is necessary to decide how approximate we wish our justice to be. I believe that reparations for the dead (eg slaves) paid to their remote descendants is too crude. However, after slavery there was still a long-term injustice towards blacks: Jim Crow. This depressed the wages of Afro-Americans. Some of these victims are still alive. Since they would be mostly retired now, I suggest compensation through the Social Security system. This could be done in many ways, for example by adjusting the probability distribution of wages of blacks to mirror that of whites (on a year-by-year basis, up to some cutoff date), and then using that adjustment to adjust individual wage histories, and so finally increase Social Security payments.
--Bob Cox
(To reply, click here.)
We do owe the black people. The whole country does, because we took their share of work for building this country up, for free, and on top we dragged them through the hell of slavery, and broken families, and constant humiliation. And even now 140 years after the Civil War, the prejudice continues. If we inherited all the good stuff from our predecessors in this country, we also inherited their debts. And the debt to the black people still needs to be paid.
--Amyntas
(To reply, click here.)
Several questions:
1)If we're starting with home-grown folks, should we be planning to collect reparations from black slave owners' descendants?
2) Would you prefer African-Americans have quasi-sovereign nations to live on like Native Americans tribes, and thus be immune (to a large extent) from the state and federal government?
3) Did Bill Clinton oppose the war before or after he signed up for ROTC, and then dropped out once he realized he might get drafted?
4) Was Gore struggling along as a pauper while Bush was living high with his family's money?
--MRB
(To reply, click here.)
Notes from the Fray Editor: Debra Dickerson does a splendid job of explaining The Fray. (In fact, our job--thanks Debra.) This is the post she mentions about the National Review. Views on reparations can be found all over The Fray, and we picked out some of what we hope she will think the more intelligent and thoughtful ones, above. And WillV liked Ms Dickerson's description of the shooting--Tuesday-- so much he thought she should be be hired by Slate to write a cops and crime column.