"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Saturday, December 14, 2002 Catholicism's Herbert Hoover
That's how Cardinal Law will be remembered, Boston College's theology chairman said yesterday. Cardinal Law has done fine things, particularly in the area of Christian-Jewish relations, said Prof. Stephen Pope, and yet: "What do you remember about Herbert Hoover? The Great Depression."
When you think about Law and Hoover – once revered, then reviled; doggedly holding to old forms that ill-equipped them to respond to the great storms that engulfed them –the comparison is apt.
And with the closing of this chapter, a plea to the TV news shows: Enough of the incense shot, already – the stock footage of Cardinal Law winging the thurible around the altar as if he's practicing for Santiago de Compostela. (Check out any of the coverage at New England Cable News and you're bound to see it.) It has occurred to me that the Novus Ordo doesn't lend itself to priestly action shots, lots of sitting around in the presider's chair not making for good TV, so a little censing has been made to go a long way.
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