"Ad maiorem Dei gloriam," or...

..."For the greater glory of God," is the motto of the Society of Jesus, the religious order to which Pope Francis belongs. But you could have fooled me. I would have thought it was, "Too little, too late."

That's what occurred to me after reading "Pope Francis Says Panel Will Study Whether Women May Serve as Deacons," on the front page of the New York Times. Or, in other words, Pope Francis is thinking of forming a group that may discuss why women still can't be priests.

What? Say it ain't so!

Don't worry; according to the article (all emphasis mine):

Lucetta Scaraffia, the co-editor of a monthly magazine on women and the church distributed with the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, said that although the pope’s words were encouraging, they did not necessarily reflect the views of most bishops.

“I doubt much will come of it,” Ms. Scaraffia said. “I think the pope would like to open discussion, but there is strong resistance” to any ordination of women.

Phew!

Facing a shortage of priests, the church in the United States has for decades been actively encouraging men to become deacons to fill the gaps. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says there are now more than 13,000 men serving in what is called the “permanent diaconate.”

Deacons are ordained ministers in the Catholic Church, and in many parishes they handle many of the same tasks that priests do. They are permitted to preach at Mass, perform baptisms, witness marriages and conduct funeral services. Deacons currently must be men over the age of 35, and they may be married (though if a deacon’s wife dies, he is expected to remain celibate).

So, like priests, deacons must be male; but unlike priests, they can't be under 35. They don't have to be single or celibate unless their wife dies, in which case they must be. Got it.

“The real problem is that they can’t figure out why a woman can be ordained a deacon but not a priest,” according to Phyllis Zagano, an advocate of women’s ordination.

Oh, that's an easy one:

...women cannot be ordained because the disciples of Jesus were all male.

They were all fishermen, too (I think), had beards and wore sandals. So what?

Every other denomination I know of has women clergy. I guess it's just a matter of time before the Catholic Church follows suit:

Creating a Vatican commission is no guarantee of change. Such commissions can take years to reach conclusions and are only advisory. Pope Paul VI rejected the majority report of a Vatican commission in 1966 that, after three years of study, essentially recommended that the church lift its ban on artificial birth control.

Can you believe it? Fifty years later, married Catholic couples still can't practice birth control, which explains why so many of them have eight, nine or even ten children, just like when we were kids.

Every once in a while I wonder why I'm a lapsed Catholic. (Not really.) But it's articles like this that remind me.

A Tale of Two Cities, conclusion.

In the final installment (I promise) of my series on why I think Chicago is nicer than it's ever been (as long as you're white and/or live on the North Side), I want to address two final challenges facing the city, police brutality and racism, and its finances and economy.

As for the first, from that piece in The Week (all emphasis mine):

The task force said the police were guilty of "decades of racism," and had "a long, sad history of death, false imprisonment, physical and verbal abuse." Cops who brutalized black citizens, the report said, rarely faced consequences.

But as the Times article concedes:

These problems and divides are not unique to Chicago. Cleveland, Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., have all been convulsed after black people died in encounters with police officers, and neighborhood segregation and budget and school problems are common in the nation’s major cities.

The Times piece doesn't mention New York for some reason, but that's a picture of Eric Garner, above, just minutes before an NYPD officer put him in a fatal chokehold two years ago. (I was going to include the video but it was just too graphic.)

Or, heck, how about Milwaukee, our neighbor to the north? Just read "Democratic, Republican voters worlds apart in divided Wisconsin: Entire communities vote red or blue as metro Milwaukee grows more politically segregated with nearly every election cycle," or "The Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker: A journey through the poisonous, racially divided world that produced a Republican star" if you're not familiar with racism in the Cream City.

(By the way, if you haven't been to Wisconsin lately you might be shocked by how much it's changed. The state that once produced such progressive leaders as Fighting Bob La Follette now more resembles Mississippi. One of my wife's childhood friends told her recently that the Newtown school shooting was "staged" so that President Obama could "take away our guns." She really said that.)

So it's not just Chicago, okay? In fact, it's probably more accurate to say that racism and police brutality are an American problem, not a Chicago problem. Be honest: could you say that your city is devoid of racism? And is police brutality something new, or are we just more aware of it since the proliferation of cell phones? (According to a study by the Equal Justice Initiative, between the years 1877 and 1950 nearly 4,000 blacks were lynched in the Jim Crow South.)

To sum it up, racism is still a problem everywhere in America (and probably always will be) but we're finally becoming aware of police brutality. If you're white, like me, just admit (to yourself, at least) that you're not color blind. The question is, would you like to be?

As for Chicago's finances, The Week says:

Chicago is "a fiscal basket case," says urban analyst Aaron Renn, with a lower credit rating than any major metropolis except Detroit.

The city's 6.6 percent jobless rate ranks 51st — dead last — among metropolitan areas with more than 1 million residents.

Its strapped school system seems perpetually on the verge of collapse, and last month teachers staged a one-day strike to protest closings and budget cuts.

The [city] has incurred $20 billion in unfunded pension debt by giving generous public pensions to unions.

Deindustrialization, the Great Recession, and other economic forces eliminated 7 percent of Chicago's jobs between 2000 and 2010 — a higher share than in any other of the nation's 10 largest metro areas. Chicago has no marquee industry to help drive its economy — unlike New York (finance), Los Angeles (entertainment), and Washington, D.C. (government). "Its wealth was built by dominating America's agro-industrial complex," Renn says, "railroads, meatpacking, lumber processing, and grain processing, but that is long gone." That loss has only deepened the city's entrenched poverty and racial divisions. "Chicago is experiencing a steep decline, quite different from that of many other large cities," Renn says. "It is a deeply troubled place."

Is it really? When I walk around Chicago's neighborhoods all I see are brand-new million-dollar house after brand-new million-dollar house after brand-new million-dollar house after...

Are all those people broke or over-extended? I kind of doubt it.

According to the Times piece, Chicago:

[has added] 41 corporate headquarters and nearly 100,000 jobs here over the past five years.

And it's true. Walk around the downtown some time -- it's thriving! Don't believe me? According to a piece in the Atlantic, as recently as 2011 Chicago's GDP rivaled that of Switzerland's. And Wikipedia estimates that the state of Illinois' GDP is larger than that of the Netherlands.

So don't tell me Chicago's economy is "deeply troubled" or it's a "fiscal basket case." There's plenty of money here -- and it's still coming in! It's just a question of priorities. For example, my property taxes in Glenview were much higher than in the city. And New York City (and Philadelphia, I think) has a commuter tax. Again, the money is here to pay for all of Chicago's "problems." You just have to go and get it.

Finally, a word about Mayor Rahm Emanuel. I don't follow state or local politics nearly as closely as I do national so I'm not the best person to listen to on the subject. But, as far as I can tell, Mr. Emanuel has done a pretty decent job as mayor. He's made a lot of tough decisions that the previous mayors avoided. Also, Rahm is caught in the middle of the toxic (there's an overused word) back-and-forth between the megalomaniac Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and his Scott-Walker-wannabe foe, Gov. Bruce Rauner. Who would want the job of mayor of Chicago, anyway? It's a thankless task, unless you want to use it as a springboard to higher office. I guess with all of its perceived problems, if you could turn it around you'd be a hero.

Anyway, that's my rant on Chicago and why I think it's probably the most "livable" big city in America.

I had heard Newt Gingrich...

...was being considered as a possible running mate for Donald Trump, but I quickly discarded the possibility. I mean, come on, another bombastic, old (Gingrich is 72), thrice-married white guy? How's that for ticket-balancing?

And if you remember, ol' Newt was the speaker of the House back in the 1990s (the heyday of the Clintons). So isn't he the ultimate Insider Politician that Trump has been railing against for almost a year now? You know, "all talk and no action"? Surely, I thought, this can't be. (I seem to say that a lot to myself when the subject turns to Donald Trump.)

And yet . . . who's in first place now for Republican Vice Presidential Candidate on Paddy Power? Yep, Newt Gingrich, at 5/4 odds!*

(John Kasich is now in second at 9/2. Maybe he's serious; maybe he really doesn't want the job.)

But Newt Gingrich? Talk about doubling-down!

There goes the "gender gap" . . . and minority voters . . . and young people . . . and college-educated suburban white voters . . . and, well, anyone who isn't an angry (probably racist) middle-aged white guy without a college degree.

* Jonathan Alter said yesterday on MTP Daily that Trump's running mate would be Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee. His name is nowhere to be found on Paddy Power.

A Tale of Two Cities, Part III.

Whenever someone asks me or my wife if our new neighborhood in the city is safe, after telling them, "Yes," we often follow it up with something like, "You should have seen it twenty years ago!"

And it's true. When I worked at the Merc we'd take clients to Rosebud on Taylor Street for dinner and a chance to gawk at the "wise guys" and "goodfellas" (or, more likely, the wannabes). But, we'd tell them, we have to take a cab directly there and directly back because -- wait for it -- there's projects in the neighborhood and it's not safe after dark! (Turns out, many of the long-time residents have confirmed that the neighborhood was, in fact, not so hot in the good ol' days.)

But, and here's the bottom line here: I know what the crime statistics in Chicago are and I know it's a much different city depending on whether you're white or live on the North Side (I get all that, okay?), but as far as my wife and I are concerned Chicago has never been a nicer place to live.

And it's not just our neighborhood. Since I've been back I've hiked through many parts of the city (often at night) and can attest that all of them -- all of them -- are nicer than when we left Chicago in 1992. I took a look at Wikipedia's page on the 77 "Community Areas" (neighborhoods) of Chicago and made a quick list of all the ones I've visited since moving back. And, as I said, they're all much nicer than when we left. Here's an incomplete list:

Cabrini–Green, River North, South Loop, West Loop, Roscoe Village, Lake View/Wrigleyville, Logan Square/Palmer Square, Uptown/Buena Park, Lincoln Square, Ravenswood, Albany Park, Edgewater/Andersonville, Irving Park, Humboldt Park, West Town/Ukrainian Village and Wicker Park, Greektown, Little Italy/Tri-Taylor, Pilsen, Bridgeport, and Hyde Park/Kenwood.

Notice a pattern? They are all on either the North Side, or the close-in Near South or West Sides. If you told me most of the neighborhoods farther South and/or West were no better or even worse than 20 years ago I wouldn't be able to argue with you. (On Tuesday night, for example, I drove through the disadvantaged South Side neighborhoods of Englewood and Auburn Gresham on my way down to Beverly. Chicago really is a Tale of Two Cities -- it's depressing.)

But that doesn't change my strong belief that Chicago as a whole has improved dramatically since I arrived here 35 years ago.

When I read things like this from that piece in The Week:

But above all, what's tearing at the city's heart are crime ... and violence.

I think, not in the Chicago where I live.

But, you may be thinking, what about all that gun violence I keep hearing about?

That's a fair question, and as I've said repeatedly, I have no reason to question the facts and/or statistics. (If anything, the police are probably understating the problem.)

But why don't I feel it, or see it? Is it because it's confined to the South and West Sides? Not really. Recently, a gun battle took place in Wrigleyville in which 78 bullets were fired. (My niece, who lives a couple of blocks away, slept blissfully through the whole thing.) And a few months ago someone was shot and killed on Roosevelt Road just a short distance from my house. But the murder took place at three in the morning. Now, I don't know about you, but like my niece, I'm safely tucked away in bed at 3:00 am.

According to the Times piece:

Chicago has long wrestled with guns and gangs, and the splintering of large gangs into smaller, disparate groups had added to the bloodshed that largely plays out on the South and West Sides. As of late April, murders were up 54 percent from last year, and shootings were up by 70 percent.

Oh, so it's a "gang" thing. Or, more specifically, a "drug trade" thing. I seem to remember reading that ever since the Feds broke up the dominant gang in the local drug trade several other gangs have been fighting over "market share" in the "industry."

Makes me kind of wonder what would happen to gun violence in Chicago if they ever legalized drugs. My great-uncle Tom "Red" Duffy was a small-time bootlegger who was shot and killed by Al Capone's gang back in the 1920s. (Capone, himself, was thought to have pulled the trigger. Talk about "high barriers to entry!") Funny, though, ever since Prohibition was repealed all of my family members have died of natural causes. Go figure.

Makes me also wonder if you're relatively safe here so long as you're not seen as in competition with those budding "entrepreneurs." I've often remarked -- only half-jokingly -- that you'd be just fine if you found yourself in one of Chicago's "bad" neighborhoods because one of the first rules of business is: Don't shoot the customer.

I apologize if I'm making light of this very serious topic. But I'm reminded of that old saying, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" In other words, if I feel safe does it really matter what the statistics are?

Next: police brutality and racism.

Donald W. Duncan, a Green Beret...

...master sergeant and Vietnam veteran who later turned against the war, died at age 79.

I didn't think Mr. Duncan's obituary in the New York Times was particularly remarkable, but what I did find interesting was that although his obit appeared in the May 6, 2016 edition of the Times, he actually died on March 25, 2009:

In an age of seeming information ubiquity, the news media will generally recall the lives of noteworthy people when they die. But Mr. Duncan’s death went largely unnoticed outside of Madison, Ind., the Ohio River town where he lived.

Ya gotta hand it to the Times -- it's thorough! Even though they missed this guy's death they still printed a big obit seven years later.

P. S. You can't see Andrew Duggan's face in this picture from the movie Seven Days in May, but his character, Col. William 'Mutt' Henderson (center), bore a striking resemblance to Sgt. Duncan -- especially with that beret on!

John Kasich has no interest...

...in carrying water for Donald Trump, according to a piece in Bloomberg today (my emphasis):

Kasich's former chief campaign strategist, John Weaver, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in a story published Monday that “under no circumstances” would Kasich join Trump on the ticket. “He's been as Shermanesque about that as one can be,” Weaver said.

But, at the same time, Paddy Power still has the Ohio governor favored to be the Donald's running mate, at 3/1 odds.

So which is it?

Kasich always sounded to me like the most sensible choice for Trump. The popular governor of a state the Republicans almost have to win to take back the White House, Kasich has extensive government experience at both the state and federal levels, and -- most important, I think -- would act as a bridge between the party's establishment (and donors and business community) and the unpredictable reality TV star. With Kasich acting as a bit of a check (they hope) on a guy most of them see as utterly unqualified to occupy the Oval Office, party bigwigs could at least kinda, sorta get some sleep.

So, once again, to quote Groucho Marx: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" In other words, is Kasich really going to turn down the No. 2 spot in a Trump administration, or are the betting markets right? Will the party just plain tell him he has to do it?

I say Gov. Kasich takes one for the team and accepts the job.

P. S. And will that force Hillary to tap Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown for her running mate?

William Schallert, who played...

...Patty Duke's father on The Patty Duke Show, died less than two months after Ms. Duke at age 93. Who's next, Ross? Richard?*

*Eddie Applegate, who played Patty's boyfriend Richard Harrison (far right), is 80 years old. Can you believe that? He was playing a teenager when he was 30 years old. Couldn't they find anyone younger for that role?