Another Poem for National Poetry Month: Osip Mandelstam on Hearts in the Night

This is an untitled poem that Osip Mandelstam wrote in March 1931:

After midnight the heart picks the locked silence
right out of your hands.  Then it may remain
quiet, or it may raise the roof.
Like it or not, it’s the only one of its kind.

Like it or not, you may know it but you’ll never catch it,
so why shiver, now, like a thrown-out child?
After midnight the heart has its banquet,
gnawing on a silvery mouse.

From Osip Mandelstam, Selected Poems, trans. Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin (NY: Atheneum, 1983). The sketch of Mandelstam is by Alexander Osmerkin.

"How Much Filth There Is in the Church": Jason Berry on Maciel, Angelo Sodano, and the Flow of Corrupt Money in the Vatican

 

Jason Berry has just published another installment of his exposé of the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, the serial rapist and priest-father of several unacknowledged children, Fr. Marcial Maciel.  As Berry publishes this sequel to his previous NCR piece about Maciel, he’s predictably being attacked by Benedict’s gallant lads, who find his work “thinly sourced.” 

Such scholars they’ve become, these lads, with their Latin dictionaries and Dicastery flow charts.  For valuable commentary on the defamatory claims of Berry’s current detractors, see Colleen Kochivar-Baker at Enlightened Catholicism.

In the News: Ratzinger and Cover-Up, Catholic Boys' Club, Politicized vs. Pastoral Bishops, and Non-Procreative Marriages as of No Consequence

And still more snippets from recent online articles that catch my eye:

Here’s Mark Silk commenting yesterday (critically so) at Spiritual Politics on Michael Sean Winters’ parsing of the Kiesle documents:

Catholic Officials' Blame Game: Who's Up Next?

So much comes out so quickly these days in the Catholic church’s crisis story, that it’s hard to keep up.  Here’s a selection of recent articles that, in my view, make thought-provoking comments.

One of the reasons it’s difficult to keep up is, of course, that the Catholic hierarchy’s blame game chooses ever-shifting targets as church officials (and the gallant lads who defend them) seek desperately to shift attention away from themselves.  And from the evil game they have played for far too now: protecting priests molesting children while ignoring (and even blaming) children who have been abused.

Vatican Goes There: Colm O'Gorman on Vatican's "Deceitful and Vile" Attempt to Blame Abuse Crisis on Gays

I doubt anyone's surprised by the latest: this from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope's second in command, who has just blamed the abuse crisis on--you guessed it--the gays.  Yesterday, the Jews.  Today, the gays.

Tumbling Wall of the Patriarchal Church and Its Cornerstones--Women in Place, Gays Excluded, Abortion Off-Limits for Discussion

This is an image I’ve shared with TheraP in a thread following a previous Bilgrimage posting.  Because it complements what I just said in the conclusion of my posting about the pope’s gallant lads and their latest (Latinate) defense of Benedict, I want to share it as a full-blown posting now.

As things continue to fall apart in the Catholic church these days, I picture the defensores fidei this way: they’re standing at a wall.  Bricks are hurling down from that wall all over the place.

Bubba Bubba and Hubba Hubba: The Pope's Gallant Lads Strike Again

 

And now with the Latin: two weekends ago, Benedict’s gallant papal lads were all on about Ratzinger the abstracted academic missing important memos, memos that (and who can really say? do you know what goes on inside chanceries and the Vatican?) may even have been written in vanishing ink, for all we know.  Memos that landed on his desk when he was archbishop of Munich.  You know, the ones about pedophile priests treated by trained professionals who begged church officials not to reassign those priests because they would surely abuse minors again.