Christmas rant

I don't know if you caught this story which recently appeared in the Washington Post. I'll quote just a bit of it here:

St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke has excommunicated a priest and the board of directors of a traditionally Polish parish that resisted his efforts to put the parish's property and assets under his control.

Unlike most other Roman Catholic parishes around the country, St. Stanislaus Kostka's board -- not the archbishop -- has governed the parish's finances, according to an arrangement dating to the late 19th century.

Since Burke began serving as archbishop in January 2004, he had increased pressure on the parish to conform to current church structure and hand over control of its assets.

It seems that the event which precipitated the excommunication of this parish board was its decision to hire a pastor - Rev. Marek Bozek - without permission of the archbishop and that priest's decision to celebrate Mass on Christmas Eve. As the Post notes:

He [Archbishop Burke] said it [excommunication] was necessary, however, because [Rev.]Bozek planned to celebrate Christmas Eve Mass. Mass has not been celebrated since Easter at the parish, which saw its priests removed last year.

So Archbishop Burke (who last year threatened to withhold communion from John Kerry because of his position on abortion) is excommunicating Catholics for celebrating Midnight Mass! Is this a part of the "War on Christmas" which Fox News frequently denounces?

There is a more serious side to this dispute which I think goes to the heart of the recent scandals in the church. First, one must ask if this penalty is truly proportional to the "offense." I am not a canon lawyer but excommunication - according to this online Catholic encyclopedia - is

the principal and severest censure, is a medicinal, spiritual penalty that deprives the guilty Christian of all participation in the common blessings of ecclesiastical society. Being a penalty, it supposes guilt; and being the most serious penalty that the Church can inflict, it naturally supposes a very grave offence.

It is also one that has been brought into disrepute by its use for trivial offenses. Therefore, the Council of Trent urged that

it is to be used with sobriety and great circumspection; seeing that experience teaches that if it be wielded rashly or for slight causes, it is more despised than feared, and works more evil than good.

In the case of St. Stanislaus Kostka parish, the offense involved is the unwillingness of a parish to turn over to the archbishop control of its property and the hiring of a pastor without the approval of the ordinary. These may indeed be serious offenses, as they tend to undermine the discipline and authority of the bishop.

On the other hand, it is instructive to compare the "offenses" of this parish with those of the leadership of the Philadelphia diocese. According to an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A Philadelphia grand jury this morning issued a scathing critique of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, saying its former archbishops and other leaders concealed and facilitated clergy sex abuse of children for decades.

The grand jury, which investigated the archdiocese for more than three years, concluded that at least 63 priests - and probably many more - sexually abused hundreds of minors over the past several decades.

But even more disturbing, the jurors found, was the coverup by the two previous archbishops, Cardinals John Krol and Anthony J. Bevilacqua who, they concluded, "excused and enabled the abuse" and put the legal and financial interests and moral reputation of the archdiocese ahead of protecting the children entrusted to its care.

"...The behavior of Archdiocese officials was perhaps not so lurid as that of the individual priest sex abusers. But in its callous, calculating manner, the Archdiocese's "handling" of the abuse scandal was at least as immoral as the abuse itself."

Which is the graver offense - the unauthorized hiring of a priest and his celebration of Mass on Christmas Eve or actions which "excused and enabled" the sexual abuse of children?

But has the Church taken steps to excommunicate Cardinal Bevilacqua - or to sanction him in any way? Quite the contrary. Again, according to the Inquirer:

In a blistering 70-page response, the church rejected virtually the entire report, calling it "a vile, mean-spirited diatribe" - comparable to the "rampant Know-Nothingisms of the 1840s," a notorious period of anti-Catholic prejudice.

While condemning priests that abused, the church response vigorously defends Cardinal Krol and Bevilacqua. It says the DA's report is "rife with mistakes, unsupported inferences and misguided conclusions."

And the situation of Cardinal Bevilacqua is not unique. No Catholic prelate has been sanctioned, to my knowledge, in connection with the recent scandals involving sexual abuse of children. In this context of indulgence of serious abuse by church leaders, it can be argued that the actions of Archbishop Burke in excommunicating the leadership of a parish in a dispute over church property and clergy appointments is for a "slight cause" and therefore "works more evil than good."

The St. Louis dispute appears to be an artifact of the lay trustee system which flourished in the early American Catholic church. Under this system, according to Jay Dolan in The American Catholic Experience:

lay trustees, elected annually by those people in the parish who rented pews, presided over the government of the parish in the area of temporal affairs.

In fairness, early bishops, including John Carroll, did not accept the extension of lay authority to the selection of parish priests. Nonetheless, there was something undeniably American and democratic about the lay trusteeship system. Dolan calls it part of an effort "to adapt the European Catholic Church to American culture by identifying that Church with American republicanism."

When the bishops took steps to dismantle the lay trustee system, some congregations turned to the civil authorities for protection of the concept. Generally, they were unsuccessful. However, in 1855 the New York legislature enacted the Putnam Bill which, according to John Tracy Ellis, "would compel lay ownership of all church property and forbid a clergyman to hold property in hisn own name." Ellis calls it "a Know-Nothing triumph."

So we're back to the Know-Nothings - also accused by the Philadelphia archdiocese of inspiring the grand jury report. But think about it - would a system in which lay trustees owned church property and played a role in the selection of parish priests have been as susceptible to the clergy abuse scandal as the one we have now? Wasn't the hierarchy's unreviewable power to transfer priests the source of many of the abuses detailed by the Philadelphia grand jury?

One of the grand jury's recommendations was that the civil statute of limitations be eliminated in order to allow what it called a "travesty of justice" to be fully remedied. The dean of the Villanova law school has opposed the lifting of the statute of limitations on the ground, among others, that the additional liability created by such a change would impair the Church's ability to carry on its important charitable and educational work. In his interview with NPR, he noted that church members are not like stockholders in a corporation.

But isn't this precisely the problem? American corporations have greater accountability and transparency than the American Catholic Church. If corporate executives had committed the same transgressions as members of the episcopate, they could be removed from office by disgusted shareholders. In fact, those shareholders and their elected directors would properly share some of the blame for failing to exercise proper oversight.

The response of the U.S. Catholic Church to the sex abuse scandals has not involved any significant introduction of the concepts of accountability or transparency into church operations. So civil authorities may feel that the only way to hold church leadership accountable is by the extraordinary means of lifting the statute of limitations. A better solution might be a return to the principles of "American republicanism" that informed the lay trustee system.

Christmas 1935

So it's the week before Christmas 1935 and you're living in New York City. You've got a little vacation and are looking for a way to spend this hard earned leisure time. Of course, you were most likely to have a "vacation" in 1935 due to job loss. The unemployment rate in 1935 was over twenty per cent. Paid vacations were common but not universal. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

In 1937, a BLS survey of 90,000 firms found that approximately 95 percent of the 700,000 salaried workers received annual vacations with pay, compared with 36.7 percent of the 9.5 million wage earners.

For salaried workers, most paid vacation plans were initiated between 1920 and 1930. Vacations were practically all for either a 1- or 2-week period, with 2 weeks reported for 57 percent and 1-week plans for 37 percent of salaried workers. The usual length of service to be eligible for a vacation was 1 year, reported for 80 percent of the plans. . ..

For wage earners, survey results indicated approximately 70 percent of plants reported initiating a paid vacation plan during the 1930-37 period; and about 40 percent gave vacations for the first time in 1937. Wage earners were typically eligible for a vacation after 1 year of service, although 40 percent required 2 years’; and 20 percent required 5 years’ or more service.

And hourly wages appear modest by our standards. According to the BLS, a survey in the fall of 1936 found that the average hourly wage in the construction industry was $.91. However, this translates to $12.74 per hour in 2005 dollars. Of course, construction work was often seasonal or occasional.

Another source gives the average weekly wage in manufacturing as $16.89. This works out to $.42 an hour. In 2005 dollars this comes to $240 per week or $12,480 a year.

Well, we got off track a bit. Back to Christmas. You buy the December 21st issue of the New Yorker ($.15 then/$2.13 today). The cover features a Christmas tree salesman working the sidewalk in front of poultry and vegetable stores.

If you're interested in a film, A Night at the Opera is playing at the Capitol. Admission is $.25 (about $3.50 in 2005 dollars) before 1 pm. In fact, Night was showing on four screens in Manhattan. The Capitol was located at Broadway and 51st. It was the largest cinema in the world when it opened in 1919.

Among its most striking features were a glorious white marble staircase that connected the mahogany-paneled lobby to the mezzanine and 16 dazzling rock-crystal chandeliers that were salvaged from the legendary Sherry's Fifth Avenue restaurant before its demolition. With Major Edward Bowes as its managing director and Samuel "Roxy" Rothapfel as producer of the stage shows, the Capitol set standards for all the big "presentation" houses that followed.

Bowes started an amateur radio show as a promotion for the theater. By 1934 it had evolved into the Original Amateur Hour - a concept later transferred to television by Ted Mack.

If you want to see a musical, Jubilee! is playing at the Imperial. The show had opened on October 12th. It was a gentle spoof of royalty and was written and composed - during a world cruise - by Moss Hart and Cole Porter. According to American Musical Theatre, the show was "lighthearted, escapist fun."

When a left-wing outbreak led by a rebellious nephew prompts their advisers to order them into seclusion [the royal family] decide to have a fling as commoners instead. The Queen flirts briefly with Charles Rausmiller, the ape man Mowgli of the movies . . . while the Prince takes the famous dancer Karen O'Kane to the Cafe Martinique where they "Begin the Beguine."

In addition to the "Beguine," the score included "Just One of Those Things" and "Why Shouldn't I?"

Theater tickets ran from $1 to $3 - depending on whether you attended a matinee or evening performance or sat in the balcony or orchestra.

What are you doing New Year's Eve? The Hotel Pierre promised "the happiest New Year's since 1928 . . . happiest in the optimism that is once again stirring in America." Taking part in this festival of optimism would set you back $10 ($142 in 2005 dollars)

At the Savoy-Plaza the same ten bucks would treat you to entertainment by a "galaxy of stars" including Medrano & Donna - the "world's greatest exponents of Spanish dancing."

A less expensive alternative was the Waldorf-Astoria where you could get dinner and listen to Xavier Cugat "and his tango band" for just two dollars.

What about Christmas gifts? If the ads in The New Yorker are any guide, liquor and candy were popular choices. A box of candy - like a Whitman's Sampler - would run you a dollar or two.

What about a book as a gift for your literate friends. The New Yorker seemed taken with The Asiatics which it described as a "brilliant and poetic first novel" which "will introduce you to a host of queer people and a fine new writer." In non-fiction it liked George Seldes' Sawdust Caesar which does "an energetic job of removing the Blackshirt whitewash" of Mussolini. The magazine also liked Walter Duranty's I Write as I Please - which whitewashed Stalin.

Finally, a few verses from Frank Sullivan's annual "Greetings, Friends" may serve to show one of the chief differences between then and now:

The Frog hates the Heinie; the Heinie, the Jew;
The world's in a hell of a hulaballoo.
Things must be come to a pretty odd fix
When the only peaceable folk are the Micks.

November 1935

Looking at the cinematic and stage offerings this month, it's interesting how many had political themes. For instance, in its November 4th issue, Time reviewed the Soviet film The New Gulliver. The movie was notable because it featured a cast of three thousand puppets. According to the Time review:

Made of clay, rubber, metal, wood and cloth, specially designed to act for the camera, they are operated not by strings like ordinary marionettes but by invisible human hands which change the puppets' positions and expressions between each film exposure. It took 25 separate shots, for example, to show a puppet raising his arm. This process gives their activities the staccato quality of a Walt Disney cartoon but it is by no means their principal claim to distinction.

The hero of the film was a young Pioneer named Petia who falls asleep and dreams that he is Gulliver in a Lilliputia wracked with struggle between workers and the king. The conflict is sharpened by Petia's "egalitarian" speeches. As this website reports:

Believing Petia to be dead, the king's soldiers, tanks, and fleet begin their attack on the workers, intending to annihilate them. Petia joins the fray. As the workers ambush and blow up the tanks, Petia wades into the ocean and incapacitates the armada. His victory celebration with the workers is cut short by the laughter of the other Pioneers, who have been listening to Petia talking in his sleep.

The film was admired by Chaplin and acclaimed by the New York Times for its "sly assault on bourgeois institutions." The New Yorker (John Mosher) was also impressed. It described the film as "unlike any other Soviet picture as anything you can see." Most Soviet cinema, Mosher noted "stuff the Cameo and the Acme with Muscovite exiles and recently returned tourists." The New Gulliver, by contrast, was "crisp, graceful and witty." The Cameo, which was located on 42d street, was showing The New Gulliver. The Acme, at Union Square, had Eisenstein's Ten Days that Shook the World - undoubtedly well-attended by Muscovite exiles. Evidently, however, there just weren't enough exiles to turn the profit the capitalist system required. The theater closed in 1936.

On the stage, the play "Dead End" was reviewed by Time in its November 11th issue. Written by Sidney Kingsley, the play moved to the screen in 1937. It gave us the expression"dead end kid" and helped launch the "urban renewal" movement.

Time was particularly taken by the sets - designed by Norman Bel Geddes:

Designer Geddes has given the U. S. Theatre new dimensions in the realm of naturalism. Displayed on the stage where David Belasco used to draw plaudits for showing real roses in real vases is apparently the east end of Manhattan's 53rd Street. To the left stands the rear entrance of a swank apartment not unlike River House. In the centre squats a row of verminous flats. To the right rises a grimy coal chute. And all across the front stretches a pier-end from which urchins dive with a splash into what normally would be the orchestra pit, but which gives every illusion of being the fetid East River.

In the New Yorker, Robert Benchley praised Bel Geddes for "a great piece of showmanship." He described the play as "an honest and forceful plea for the kids who live along the east ends of New York streets, where gangsters are bred and limousines parked, all in the same block."

Eleanor Roosevelt saw the play three times and requested a command performance at the White House. Some credit the play with helping to create a national outcry over slum housing and crime which ultimately led to passage of the Wagner Housing bill.

Of less social significance was the long delayed opening of "Jumbo" - which Time reviewed in its November 25th issue. Staged at the Hippodrome, the show was a combination of the musical and the circus. Indeed it was advertised as "Bigger than a show, Better than a circus." Jimmy Durante starred and according to Time, his

big moment comes when he leads out the show's one elephant, points to the pachyderm's snout and then to his own, exclaims, "Me and him's related!" then suddenly finds that his relative has rolled over on him.

The score was by Rodgers and Hart and included "My Romance", "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" and "Little Girl Blue." According to Gerald Bordman's American Musical Theatre the production cost $340,000. This would translate to about $4.8 million today. According to Bordman, the show ran for seven months but earned back just half of its investment.

Benchley gave the show a favorable review. He commented on the delay in its opening - it had originally been scheduled to open around Labor Day - noting that "[n]ow all that remains is to complete the Triborough Bridge and enforce the sanctions against Italy, and we can all sit back and finish reading 'Europa'". (Europa was among the best-selling novels of 1935. Time described it as an "awkwardly written . . .exhaustive 500-page picture of upper-class Europe in the decades before the War.")

This show must have been worth seeing, if only for the sight of, as Benchley related, "Paul Whiteman, ravishing in baby-blue raiment, astride a white charger at the head of his musical myrmidons."

Speaking of jazz greats, Benny Goodman and his band released seven sides on November 22d. The numbers included "Basin Street Blues" and "When Buddha Smiles" - arranged by Fletcher Henderson - and "Yankee Doodle Never Went to Town" sung by Helen Ward. Bits of these numbers can be heard here.

On November 18th, Time reviewed A Night at the Opera. The magazine noted that the film marked the shift of the team of Groucho, Harpo and Chico from Paramount to MGM.

Irving Thalberg, giving them their present contract, pointed out that he was offering as much for three brothers as they had received before the fourth Marx turned agent. Yelled Groucho Marx: "What do you mean? The same dough? Without Zeppo, we're worth twice as much."

Time did not seem overwhelmed. It called Night "one of the most complicated feature comedies ever photographed" and added that "[t]o U. S. audiences which once split their sides at the Marxes, but now find them dullish, it will be good news that the brothers have some new routines."

The New Yorker echoed this theme. It noted "[t]his is a good Marx brothers film . . .but of course their antics are familiar, their badinage and their general behavior without surprises for most of us."

This contemporary criticism is at odds with received wisdom today - which is that Night represents a striking departure from the more anarchic Paramount films.