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Vocation directors report increased interest for fourth year in a row
New revelations of clergy sex abuse and the Vatican apostolic visitation of U.S. communities of women religious have not discouraged Catholics from considering a religious vocation
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Lord Patten sets tongues wagging as he flies into Rome
Lord Patten keeps quiet about rumours that he is to be named as Britain's next ambassador to the Holy See.
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Paint The White House Green » Popular Fidelity » Unusual Stuff
If the Pope can stick up solar panels everywhere in Vatican City, it shouldn’t require a big public display of pomp and circumstance for Obama to put up some solar panels on the White House
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The Vatican's Astronomer and Videos from the Holy Land
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Online This Week: The Vatican's Astronomer and Videos from the Holy Land
A few notable online items this week:
First, an interview with George Coyne, S.J., of the Vatican Observatory. Fr. Coyne explains how the Vatican became involved in astronomy and responds to Stephen Hawking's recent statements on the origins of the universe (see minute 15:40).
Kevin Clarke, recently returned from the Holy Land, has filed two reports on the status of Christians in the Middle East. The first, a video interview with Steven Barhoum, the vicar of the Church of the Holy Family outside of Nazareth, can be found here. Below is a narrated slideshow of his trip.
Read more at www.americamagazine.org
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No Islamic Mea Culpas | The Jewish Week
t first-ever conference on the topic, experts explore the history and potential threat of Muslim anti-Semitism.
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Vatican archbishop preaches to 6 Supreme Court justices, emphasizes natural law
Preaching at the annual Red Mass in Washington before the beginning of the Supreme Court term, Archbishop J. Augustine DiNoia, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, emphasized that natural law is the basis of positive law and democratic society. Six Supreme Court justices and Vice President Joe Biden were in attendance.
“Positive law rests on certain principles the knowledge of which constitutes nothing less than a participation in the divine law itself: the pursuit of the common good through respect for the natural law, the dignity of the human person, the inviolability of innocent life from conception to natural death, the sanctity of marriage, justice for the poor, protection of minors, and so on,” Archbishop DiNoia said, adding:
The legal profession is entrusted with the discernment and administration of justice and the rule of law according to an objective measure—in effect, according to principles—not of our own making. A consensus about these principles inspired the founders of modern democracies, and although it was profoundly influenced by Judaism, Islam, and Christianity (think of Averroes, Maimonides and Aquinas), this consensus was understood to transcend religious and cultural differences. Thus, it follows that the invocation of the Holy Spirit in the Red Mass is a prayer for light and guidance. Among the things for which we ardently pray is the wisdom to affirm and maintain those profound truths about human nature that are at the foundation of the common life we treasure in this great nation.
“Yet, as she invokes the guidance and consolation of the Holy Spirit today, the erosion of this conviction is a source of deep concern for the Church,” he continued. “The alternative view—until recently more or less successfully resisted by democratic societies like ours—is the idea that man can find happiness and freedom only apart from God. This exclusive humanism has been exposed as an anti-humanism of the most radical kind.”
“Man without God is not more free but surely in greater danger,” he added. “The tragic history of the last century—as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have unceasingly reminded us—demonstrates that the eclipse of God leads not to greater human liberation but to the most dire human peril. That innocent human life is now so broadly under threat has seemed to many of us one of the many signs of this growing peril.”
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Amplify’d from ncronline.org
Archbishop Di Noia's homily at today's Red Mass
by Tom Roberts on Oct. 03, 2010
This morning, at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, the John Carroll Society is hosting the annual Red Mass. As always, Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl will be the principal celebrant. Vice-President Biden will lead the delegation from the executive branch and Chief Justice Roberts is expected to lead the delegation from the judicial branch. The homilist is Archbishop J. Augustine DiNoia, O.P. who was kind enough to send a copy of his sermon to NCR. It is quite the tour de homiletic force.
-- Michael Sean Winters
LIGHT IMMORTAL, LIGHT DIVINE
The Invocation of the Holy Spirit at the Start of the Judicial Year
Ezekiel 36:24-28 / Romans 8:26-27 / John 14:23-26
Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P.
Secretary, Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments
In anticipation of the official opening of the Supreme Court term tomorrow, we unite in prayer today in this solemn liturgy in order to invoke the Holy Spirit upon the distinguished justices, the judges, attorneys, and lawmakers, professors and students of the law, the law clerks and paralegals, and upon all others who serve us in the various sectors of the legal profession. We give thanks to God for their precious service, and we humbly pray, “Holy Spirit, Lord of light / From the clear celestial height / Thy pure beaming radiance give”(Veni Sancte Spiritus, Pentecost Sequence, trans. Nat. Lit. Conf. England and Wales, 1967).
The annual invocation of the Holy Spirit at the start of the judicial year in Washington reflects a 700 year old tradition honoring the sacred character of the law and the vital civic role of its guardians. Indeed, the practice of celebrating a Red Mass—“red” because of the color of both the liturgical vesture and the traditional judicial robes—at the opening of the judicial term is as old as the legal profession itself. According to historian James Brundage (cf. The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession, University of Chicago Press, 2008), the emergence of a distinctive legal profession in the West dates roughly to the thirteenth century—precisely when the first recorded celebrations of the Red Mass occurred in Paris in 1245 and in Westminster in 1301. It may well be that the widespread practice of celebrating a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit at other similar occasions—like the start of the academic year—originated with the tradition of the Red Mass.
The celebration of the annual Red Mass signals the profound esteem which the Church has for the Supreme Court and the legal and judicial institutions of this nation, for the invocation of the Holy Spirit on this occasion springs from nothing other than the trinitarian faith which is at the very center of her faith. “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come and make our dwelling with him.” Christ teaches and the Church proclaims that God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, desires to share the communion of trinitarian life with creaturely persons, that—in the famous formulation of St. Irenaeus—God who is without need of anyone gives communion with himself to those who need him. Christ teaches us, moreover, that it is the Holy Spirit who plays a critical role in fitting individual persons and the Church herself for this high destiny. “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, that the Father will send in my name…will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” Thus we can pray: Veni Sancte Spiritus! Come Holy Spirit! “Thou, on us who evermore / Thee confess and thee adore, / With thy sevenfold gifts descend. / Give us comfort when we die; / Give us life with thee on high; / Give us joys that never end.”What should we be praying for as we invoke the Holy Spirit on the justices and on all the rest of us during this Red Mass? As St. Paul reminds us, the Holy Spirit himself helps us to ask for the right things: “The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groaning.” We have already heard some verses from the ancient “Golden Sequence” for Pentecost Sunday, the Veni Sancte Spiritus; let us turn to it again to learn more of what we can expect when the Church invokes the Holy Spirit in this solemn setting.
Veni Sancte Spiritus! Come Holy Spirit! “Thou, of all consolers best, / Thou the soul’s delightful guest, / Dost refreshing peace bestow; / Thou in toil art comfort sweet; / Pleasant coolness in the heat; / Solace in the midst of woe.” In praying to the Holy Spirit, for, among other blessings, consolation, peace, and solace, the Church understands the nearly overwhelming complexity of the climate which envelops the practice of law and the administration of justice today.And perhaps not just today. It was precisely such complexity that gave rise to the legal profession in the 13th century as popes, kings and bishops found it impossible to carry out their duties without expert legal advice. You will be amused to learn that, during this period, there was lively debate about whether popes should be elected from the ranks of theologians or of canon lawyers: as a theologian, it pains me to report that learned opinion favored the election of qualified lawyers to the See of Peter.
In all seriousness, no informed observer can fail to acknowledge that the social and cultural pluralism of our times—not to mention the relentless and sometimes pitiless public scrutiny to which you are subjected—makes the work of judges and lawyers today very hard indeed. The Church prays that, amidst the clamor of contending interests and seemingly intractable moral disagreements, the Holy Spirit will help you to maintain your personal integrity and professional equilibrium. Not for nothing, then, do we invoke the Holy Spirit today with these poignant words. Veni Sancte Spiritus! Come Holy Spirit! “Heal our wounds, our strength renew; / On our dryness pour thy dew; / Wash the stains of guilt away. / Bend the stubborn heart and will; / Melt the frozen, warm the chill; / Guide the steps that go astray.”
The words of the prophet Ezekiel recall another important element in our invocation of the Holy Spirit today. “I will put my Spirit within you,” he says, “and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees.” Positive law rests on certain principles the knowledge of which constitutes nothing less than a participation in the divine law itself: the pursuit of the common good through respect for the natural law, the dignity of the human person, the inviolability of innocent life from conception to natural death, the sanctity of marriage, justice for the poor, protection of minors, and so on. The legal profession is entrusted with the discernment and administration of justice and the rule of law according to an objective measure—in effect, according to principles—not of our own making. A consensus about these principles inspired the founders of modern democracies, and although it was profoundly influenced by Judaism, Islam, and Christianity (think of Averroes, Maimonides and Aquinas), this consensus was understood to transcend religious and cultural differences. Thus, it follows that the invocation of the Holy Spirit in the Red Mass is a prayer for light and guidance. Among the things for which we ardently pray is the wisdom to affirm and maintain those profound truths about human nature that are at the foundation of the common life we treasure in this great nation. “Holy Spirit, Lord of Light … / Come thou light of all that live … / Light immortal, light divine.”
At the deepest level, our invocation of the Holy Spirit here today manifests the conviction that the democratic state does not so much confer the most fundamental human rights and the duties of citizenship as acknowledge their existence and source in a power beyond the state, namely in God himself. Your presence here today bears eloquent witness to the enduring power of this conviction.
Yet, as she invokes the guidance and consolation of the Holy Spirit today, the erosion of this conviction is a source of deep concern for the Church. The alternative view—until recently more or less successfully resisted by democratic societies like ours—is the idea that man can find happiness and freedom only apart from God. This exclusive humanism has been exposed as an anti-humanism of the most radical kind. Man without God is not more free but surely in greater danger. The tragic history of the last century—as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have unceasingly reminded us—demonstrates that the eclipse of God leads not to greater human liberation but to the most dire human peril. That innocent human life is now so broadly under threat has seemed to many of us one of the many signs of this growing peril. Gabriel Marcel said somewhere that in our time “human flesh has undergone such intolerable outrage that it must receive some kind of reparation in glory…The world today can be endured only if one’s spirit is riveted on [the] hope of the resurrection... If this hope were shared by a greater number, perhaps, respect for the flesh and for the body, so terribly lacking in our time, would be restored.” Thus, along with wisdom and light, today we must also beg the Holy Spirit for the gift of hope in the resurrection.
Our enactment of this ancient ritual of the Red Mass joins us to the generations of judges and lawyers who pursued their professions conscious of their need for divine grace and guidance, for enlightenment, for consolation, for refreshment, for solace, for healing, for comfort, for hope. May these wonderful blessings of the Holy Spirit be yours today! Veni Sancte Spritus! Come Holy Spirit! “Come, thou Father of the poor, / Come with treasures which endure… / Light immortal, light divine, / Visit thou these hearts of thine, / And our inmost being fill.” Amen.
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Pope's UK trip hands embattled environment departments £3.7m bill | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Green campaigners angry that contribution comes at a time when environment spending and departments are under threat
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The Associated Press: Italian PM under fire again, for Holocaust remark
ROME — The head of Rome's Jewish community joined the Vatican newspaper and others Tuesday in sharply rebuking Premier Silvio Berlusconi for a joke about ...
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William Friedkin and Linda Blair on the Making of 'The Exorcist' - The Moviefone Blog
Director William Friedkin recalls a mixed reaction from Catholics around the world upon the film's initial release. Although he reports that there was no stated reaction from the Catholic Church, some within their ranks liked it, while others despised it. Friedkin says Cardinal O'Connor "used to talk about in his homilies at St. Patrick's Cathedral," while the head of the Jesuit order at the time, Father Pedro Arrupe in Milan, "loved the film, had his own print and used to run screenings of it for friends and clergy". On the flip side, adds Friedkin, "Billy Graham once said publicly that 'the Devil is in every frame of 'The Exorcist.'' That's a quote. I, of course, never saw it that way. I saw as a story of good and evil and one explanation of an inexplicable topic, which is why bad things happen to good people."
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‘History has taken a back seat'
Someone should have pointed out in court that the belief that the place was the birthplace of Ram was first clearly mentioned by a French Jesuit priest, Tiffenthaler, in 1788.
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Now Congressman Cao, Call On Your Friend President Obama
The real question is whether the former Jesuit seminarian has the appetite for the type of negative campaign that will be necessary for victory. ...
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Report demands that Mexico try human rights claims against military in civilian courts | La Plaza | Los Angeles Times
The report, titled "Abused and Afraid in Ciudad Juarez," was co-authored with the Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Augustin Pro Juarez, a Jesuit-affiliated ...
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Fat Bottomed Whore
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Read more at www.godhatesfags.com
Fat Bottomed Whore. Parody of Fat Bottomed Girls by Queen. PDF Lyrics.
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Controversial church brings 'provocation' to Washington campus
Shirley Phelps-Roper, the church's attorney and daughter of church founder Fred W. Phelps Sr., said the group chose Trinity in part because of its proximity to I-70. Members demonstrated at Ohio State University in Columbus and Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, W.Va., earlier in the day.
"We picked it because it stands in the shadows of all doomed American high schools," Phelps-Roper said.
Kasunich said he suspected Trinity's name played a part.
"If you research the group, they're anti-Catholic, anti-gay, anti-military, and I think they may believe that Trinity, given the name, may have had a Catholic connotation," he said.
Counterprotesters included neighbors, students from nearby Washington & Jefferson College and Wheeling Jesuit, and a group calling itself the Concerned Citizens. They carried anti-Westboro signs and cheered passing vehicles that honked in support. Some shouted "Go home!" and another group started singing "God Bless America."
Amplify’d from www.pittsburghlive.com
Controversial church brings 'provocation' to Washington campus
By Bob Bauder
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
'God hates America'
Justin Merriman | Pittsburgh Tribune-Reviewclick to enlarge
'More dead soldiers'
Justin Merriman | Pittsburgh Tribune-ReviewAbout the writer
Bob Bauder is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review staff writer and can be reached at 412-380-5627 or via e-mail.
Ways to get us
Nine members of a controversial Kansas church known for protesting military funerals disrupted classes in a Washington County school district yesterday by staging a 30-minute demonstration at Trinity High School.
Members of Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church -- including two children, ages 8 and 9 -- sang and chanted a message condemning gays, abortion and members of the military, among other things, as two dozen police officers kept watch outside the school.
"My son just got back from Afghanistan," said North Franklin police Chief Richard Horner, who led the detail. "I don't much care for them, but I have to protect people."
The church members carried signs, dragged American flags on the ground and danced to music on Park Avenue. The group arrived about 2:15 p.m. and left in a Ford van about 30 minutes later with a police escort. Officers, some with dogs, kept the group separate from counter-protesters and onlookers.
Trinity Area School District administrators, who learned of the protest about six weeks ago when Westboro notified North Franklin officials of its intentions, dismissed classes districtwide beginning at 10 a.m. Superintendent Paul Kasunich, who watched the protest, cited student safety as the main reason. The district has about 3,400 students.
Kasunich said Internet research of Westboro and its radical message convinced him that students would gain nothing by witnessing the event. He asked students to go home upon dismissal.
"This group's sole purpose is publicity, then lawsuits," he said. "They want provocation. They want conflict. We decided we wouldn't give them what they want, and I think at this point we've done a pretty good job."
The group was on its way to Washington, where the Supreme Court is scheduled this week to hear arguments on whether the church has a First Amendment right to protest at private funerals.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, the church's attorney and daughter of church founder Fred W. Phelps Sr., said the group chose Trinity in part because of its proximity to I-70. Members demonstrated at Ohio State University in Columbus and Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, W.Va., earlier in the day.
"We picked it because it stands in the shadows of all doomed American high schools," Phelps-Roper said.
Kasunich said he suspected Trinity's name played a part.
"If you research the group, they're anti-Catholic, anti-gay, anti-military, and I think they may believe that Trinity, given the name, may have had a Catholic connotation," he said.
Counterprotesters included neighbors, students from nearby Washington & Jefferson College and Wheeling Jesuit, and a group calling itself the Concerned Citizens. They carried anti-Westboro signs and cheered passing vehicles that honked in support. Some shouted "Go home!" and another group started singing "God Bless America."
Mary Pillow of Amity said Trinity students should have been encouraged to witness the event.
"I think they could have learned a valuable lesson in civility and decency and letting the truth be heard instead of just going home and watching TV," she said. "There could have been some great conversations in that school tomorrow."
Read more at www.pittsburghlive.com
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Controversial church brings 'provocation' to Washington campus
By Bob Bauder
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Nine members of a controversial Kansas church known for protesting military funerals disrupted classes in a Washington County school district yesterday by staging a 30-minute demonstration at Trinity High School.
Members of Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church -- including two children, ages 8 and 9 -- sang and chanted a message condemning gays, abortion and members of the military, among other things, as two dozen police officers kept watch outside the school.
"My son just got back from Afghanistan," said North Franklin police Chief Richard Horner, who led the detail. "I don't much care for them, but I have to protect people."
The church members carried signs, dragged American flags on the ground and danced to music on Park Avenue. The group arrived about 2:15 p.m. and left in a Ford van about 30 minutes later with a police escort. Officers, some with dogs, kept the group separate from counter-protesters and onlookers.
Trinity Area School District administrators, who learned of the protest about six weeks ago when Westboro notified North Franklin officials of its intentions, dismissed classes districtwide beginning at 10 a.m. Superintendent Paul Kasunich, who watched the protest, cited student safety as the main reason. The district has about 3,400 students.
Kasunich said Internet research of Westboro and its radical message convinced him that students would gain nothing by witnessing the event. He asked students to go home upon dismissal.
"This group's sole purpose is publicity, then lawsuits," he said. "They want provocation. They want conflict. We decided we wouldn't give them what they want, and I think at this point we've done a pretty good job."
The group was on its way to Washington, where the Supreme Court is scheduled this week to hear arguments on whether the church has a First Amendment right to protest at private funerals.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, the church's attorney and daughter of church founder Fred W. Phelps Sr., said the group chose Trinity in part because of its proximity to I-70. Members demonstrated at Ohio State University in Columbus and Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, W.Va., earlier in the day.
"We picked it because it stands in the shadows of all doomed American high schools," Phelps-Roper said.
Kasunich said he suspected Trinity's name played a part.
"If you research the group, they're anti-Catholic, anti-gay, anti-military, and I think they may believe that Trinity, given the name, may have had a Catholic connotation," he said.
Counterprotesters included neighbors, students from nearby Washington & Jefferson College and Wheeling Jesuit, and a group calling itself the Concerned Citizens. They carried anti-Westboro signs and cheered passing vehicles that honked in support. Some shouted "Go home!" and another group started singing "God Bless America."
Mary Pillow of Amity said Trinity students should have been encouraged to witness the event.
"I think they could have learned a valuable lesson in civility and decency and letting the truth be heard instead of just going home and watching TV," she said. "There could have been some great conversations in that school tomorrow."
Members of Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church -- including two children, ages 8 and 9 -- sang and chanted a message condemning gays, abortion and members of the military, among other things, as two dozen police officers kept watch outside the school.
"My son just got back from Afghanistan," said North Franklin police Chief Richard Horner, who led the detail. "I don't much care for them, but I have to protect people."
The church members carried signs, dragged American flags on the ground and danced to music on Park Avenue. The group arrived about 2:15 p.m. and left in a Ford van about 30 minutes later with a police escort. Officers, some with dogs, kept the group separate from counter-protesters and onlookers.
Trinity Area School District administrators, who learned of the protest about six weeks ago when Westboro notified North Franklin officials of its intentions, dismissed classes districtwide beginning at 10 a.m. Superintendent Paul Kasunich, who watched the protest, cited student safety as the main reason. The district has about 3,400 students.
Kasunich said Internet research of Westboro and its radical message convinced him that students would gain nothing by witnessing the event. He asked students to go home upon dismissal.
"This group's sole purpose is publicity, then lawsuits," he said. "They want provocation. They want conflict. We decided we wouldn't give them what they want, and I think at this point we've done a pretty good job."
The group was on its way to Washington, where the Supreme Court is scheduled this week to hear arguments on whether the church has a First Amendment right to protest at private funerals.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, the church's attorney and daughter of church founder Fred W. Phelps Sr., said the group chose Trinity in part because of its proximity to I-70. Members demonstrated at Ohio State University in Columbus and Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, W.Va., earlier in the day.
"We picked it because it stands in the shadows of all doomed American high schools," Phelps-Roper said.
Kasunich said he suspected Trinity's name played a part.
"If you research the group, they're anti-Catholic, anti-gay, anti-military, and I think they may believe that Trinity, given the name, may have had a Catholic connotation," he said.
Counterprotesters included neighbors, students from nearby Washington & Jefferson College and Wheeling Jesuit, and a group calling itself the Concerned Citizens. They carried anti-Westboro signs and cheered passing vehicles that honked in support. Some shouted "Go home!" and another group started singing "God Bless America."
Mary Pillow of Amity said Trinity students should have been encouraged to witness the event.
"I think they could have learned a valuable lesson in civility and decency and letting the truth be heard instead of just going home and watching TV," she said. "There could have been some great conversations in that school tomorrow."
JERRY BROWN BROKE THE LAW ON VISIT WITH FIDEL
JERRY BROWN BROKE THE LAW ON VISIT WITH FIDEL
5 October 2010
Meg Whitman isn’t the only gubernatorial candidate with a legal skirmish in her past. Cuba expert Ann Louise Bardach reports that Jerry Brown violated U.S. sanction law during a trip to Cuba by using a CIA turncoat as a travel agent. Similar sanction violations were prosecuted extensively by George W. Bush. Plus: never before reported details of Brown’s mojito-fueled conversations with Fidel on topics from Elian Gonzalez’s future to Hugo Chavez’s role in Venezuela; Brown’s four-hour limo ride with Fidel; the double agent who booked Brown’s travel; and Brown’s later concerns about breaking the law.
By Ann Louise BardachThe Daily Beast
It was well after midnight on July 24, 2000, when I heard a knock at the door of our room on the Hotel Nacional’s sixth floor. Visiting hours in Cuba run later than they do in the United States, but even by Havana standards, this was a tad late. My husband opened the door to reveal Jerry Brown, the mayor of Oakland, former governor of California, former presidential candidate, and one of the most original and unpredictable politicians in American history.
It’s true you never know who you’ll run into at the Nacional Hotel in Havana. A shabby Grand Hotel, whose suites are rumored to be secretly wired, the very walls of the Nacional seem to breathe intrigue.
Think Casablanca on the Caribbean.
And never more so than in the summer of 2000. Fidel Castro, after all, was celebrating his greatest triumph since the Bay of Pigs: the return of the miracle rafter child, Elian Gonzalez.
Welcomed into our modest room, an amiable Brown, who had put on some weight and lost some hair in recent years, first inquired what we had to drink. Finding something to his liking in the minibar, he settled into the room’s one upholstered chair and put his feet up.
Earlier in the evening, we had encountered and chatted with Brown and his aides in the small dining room on the Nacional’s sixth floor. He and his companions said they were enjoying Cuba’s many enchantments, including the hotel’s mojitos, when not attending to official business.
My Havana meeting with Brown came at the beginning of his one-week Cuban adventure, a Caribbean getaway that perhaps did not take into consideration his future political ambitions. It was unlikely that Brown anticipated he would soon be the attorney general of California or that 10 years hence he’d be throwing his hat into the ring once again to be governor of California. Or that his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, would be willing to pony up some $150 million to defeat him. Until last week, Whitman was basking in a five-point lead, numbers that plummeted after revelations of her long-term employment of an undocumented Latino housekeeper.
Suddenly Brown, in a state where Latinos cast 22 percent of the vote, has the five-point advantage. But as it turns out, Brown had his own Latin misadventure, one that may have skirted the law.
Indeed, by the time Brown returned from his Cuban idyll on July 29, 2000, he had bonded with its Maximum Leader and lunched with the world’s most famous 6-year-old, Elian Gonzalez.
And all thanks to a trip planner who happened to be a former CIA officer-turned-double agent-turned-tour guide.
***
Traveling to Cuba with Brown was Jacques Barzaghi, his controversial aide de camp; George Musgrove, Oakland’s assistant city manager; and the director of KTOP, Oakland’s public TV channel, who was there to memorialize the mayor’s mission. Brown explained to me that he was there to officiate Oakland’s sister-cityhood with Santiago de Cuba.
True to form, Brown offered plenty of engaging and unpredictable conversation: He lamented that “the liberals were ruining Oakland’s school system” and discussed his plans for a establishing a charter military school. Brown and company also expressed shock at the number, youth, and visibility of the prostitutes who flocked around Cuban hotels and visiting foreigners.
Brown then surprised me with a query of his own. “Do you know who this guy Philip Agee is?” Before I could reply, he added guilelessly, “He’s our travel agent.”
***
Prior to his reinvention as a Cuban tour guide, Agee, who died in 2008, was a CIA agent who had disclosed the identity of scores of U.S. intelligence assets in 1975 before fleeing the country. Many in U.S. intelligence, including former CIA director George H.W. Bush, believed that Agee’s disclosures led to the murder of at least one of those named.
In 1998, Agee settled in Havana and started a travel agency. He was well-known in the capital as an entertaining storyteller, and he had plenty of tales for his Californian guests. “When Che Guevara was in El Morro, executing the enemies of the revolution,” Brown said, recounting one Agee chestnut, “the CIA sends him a message that says, ‘We ask you not to execute this particular person.’ And [Che] said, ‘The hell with you,’ and he went ahead and did it. And [Agee] said that a month later, [the CIA] did Bay of Pigs. I guess, his theory being that they cannot work with these people.” As a trip planner, Brown said Agee was “a very good travel agent, [who] got everything done,” adding, “he’s quite a guy.”
James Olson, former chief of counterintelligence at the CIA, had a less benign view of Agee, whom he identified as a Cuban intelligence agent beginning in the 1960s. “It was Agee who approached an inexperienced CIA officer in Mexico City and requested confidential files, claiming that he was asking on behalf of the CIA’s inspector general. And he got some stuff,” said Olson. “It tells you how good the [Cuban intelligence agency] was. Agee was on their payroll and had done very well by them.”
And there was another thorny issue. A Treasury Department official said, “U.S. citizens are required to use authorized travel agencies approved by OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control],” which did not include Agee’s. (His U.S. passport was revoked in 1979.) While quite a few Americans violate U.S. travel sanctions to Cuba every year, not using an agency on OFAC’s list, she said, “is a violation of U.S. sanctions.”
***
Brown had an agenda for his late-night visit to our room: to snare a meeting with Fidel. How exactly, he asked, had I come to interview Castro in 1994 for Vanity Fair? I explained the time-intensive process of “knocking on all the doors of entry,” and related Castro’s wry comment when he finally consented: “We decided to speak with you because we know you will never leave until you get this interview.”
I suggested that when Brown next met with Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly, he emphasize that like Fidel Castro, he was educated by the Jesuits. Indeed, Brown might mention that he had been a seminarian—and nearly became a priest.
Both shared an asceticism and intellectualism, encouraged by the Jesuits. Brown, however, retained spiritual aspirations, while Castro had neither doubt nor belief. I was quite sure Castro would be intrigued.
***
I had been covering the Elian saga since the precocious child was found bobbing in the waters off Fort Lauderdale the previous Thanksgiving. The following night was an event to celebrate his return. At the Carlos Marx Theater, the Comandante, swapping his military fatigues for a designer suit, honored the “nobility and patriotism” of Elian’s father, Juan Miguel. A simple, shy man who worked as a cashier at a tourist restaurant, the young father barely spoke, his eyes glazed in bafflement—with occasional flickers of fright.
Then it was on to Santa Clara, where Castro delivered an early-morning speech before thousands of groggy Cubans, who dutifully waved small paper flags. As I scanned the rows of Cuban military and Politburo VIPs, I saw a familiar face: Jerry Brown, in a short-sleeved white shirt, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. And trailing behind Brown, as the crowd streamed out, was Philip Agee.
I caught up with Brown, who excitedly reported that he and Castro had bonded over their shared background. “We first had lunch in Havana, and I mentioned that we both went to Jesuit high schools,” related Brown. “Fidel was talking about the Pope and the Catholic Church and how the Doctrine of Hell doesn’t do anything for anybody…He talked about when he was in school and they taught him this, and he was saying how bad that was.”
Brown said he shared a similar disenchantment: “I actually went into the seminary, but at some point, some of these doctrines lost their plausibility for me.”
Although Castro allowed Brown’s KTOP director to film the arrival of Brown, Agee, and company at the Palace of the Revolution, cameras were barred from the lunch. “But he filmed when I went in to meet Castro: We stood around and had a drink, chatted for a while, and then we sat down and we talked” for almost three hours. Lunch was lamb, vegetables, and grapefruit, washed down with a good deal of spirits—mojitos, white wine, and red wine Castro picked out for the occasion. He “didn’t waste any time,” reported Brown. “He launches right into something—what I call substantive discussion. He talked, when we first met, about Elian.”
After lunch, Castro ordered another round of mojitos, and it was clear to all that the Cuban strongman was delighted by Brown’s company. So much so that he extended another invitation: “Castro said, ‘Come out to Santa Clara,’” Brown told me. “‘I’d like you to see the 26th of July rally and meet Elian and his father.’”
It was the coup of an already astounding week. The Brown entourage had just returned from festivities in Santiago, where Brown had met his mayoral counterpart and finalized Oakland’s sister-cityhood. Later in the day, the group attended a Santeria rite, he said, followed by “an hour and a half of wild dancing in the street” with a small bevy of lively cubanitas.
***
Brown had been driven out to Santa Clara with the English-speaking Alarcon, which required him to cancel a scheduled appointment with U.S. officials at the Interests Section in Havana. One official said he had explicitly warned Brown not “to bring Philip Agee,” whom he described as a “traitor,” to the meeting. “We called them from Alarcon’s car [and] left a message with one of their helpers,” said Brown. “They can be pretty vindictive over there at the State Department.”
Upon his arrival, he said he saw Elian Gonzalez playing outside the guest cottages. At dinner that night, he met the boy’s father, who came by to shake his hand.
Following Castro’s speech, Brown cheerfully told me that he was en route to another lunch with Fidel and Elian.
A week later, I again caught up with Brown, who filled me in on his excellent adventure with Fidel and Elian. The Santa Clara lunch, he said, had been delayed for about two hours, as Castro wanted some time to chat with a visiting Venezuelan journalist. “I understand he’s trying to interfere with the Venezuelan election,” said Brown, in what would prove to be an historical understatement: Hugo Chavez, Castro’s disciple and oil patron, was up for election in 2000.
Brown, a good listener and a close observer, predicted that an auspicious political future lay ahead for young Elian. “Fidel’s obsessed with Elian,” Brown told me. “This kid is really destined to do some great stuff…It almost feels to him like Elian was providential. [Fidel] looks at him as a kid with potential. And, Castro, in a very fatherly way is recognizing the potential…I think he’s grooming him to be his successor.”
Brown’s political antennae proved to be dead on. In late August 2010, Elian Gonzalez, now a 16-year-old cadet at Los Camilitos Military School, declared in one of his increasingly frequent public appearances his “great commitment” to the Cuban Revolution and his willingness to shed his “own blood for it.”
The Santa Clara lunch, like most meals with Castro, went on for hours. Indeed, he was so engaged by conversation with the visiting Californian that he did not want lunch to end. As Brown’s flight was to leave Havana later that evening, Castro offered to personally escort him to Jose Marti Airport in his black Mercedes limousine. With Fidel’s driver and chief bodyguard in the front seat for the four-hour drive back to Havana, the two former Jesuits sat in the backseat—along with Castro’s interpreter—discussing the world.
Asked what he communicated to Castro, Brown replied: “I said I think the world needs a new shift in attitudes because the historic way of nations handling their problems has to be modified in view of the weaponry that’s out there. That’s my point.” He added he was troubled by “all the happy-time news, everybody’s smiling. Every time you look at television, you look at a politician [who’s] all smily in an unprecedented way…In general there’s a Panglossian optimism in the American political discourse which I didn’t see in Castro.”
Upon his return, Brown mentioned his two forays with Castro to the San Francisco Chronicle, which noted that the visit was “not part of the itinerary approved by the U.S. State Department, which prohibits meetings between U.S. and Cuban government officials.” However, the law on public officials is less stringent, and Brown seemed unconcerned.
But he was a tad worried when I chatted with him a week later. “When I came back I was reading the material, and you’re supposed to have an authorized travel agent,” he said. I asked if that was of significance. “Well, it makes it a crime!” he exclaimed. “The Treasury Department can prosecute me.” (Brown’s office did not respond to a request Monday for comment on his Cuba trip.) As it turned out, the department had little interest at the time in pursuing infractions involving travel to Cuba. Not until George W. Bush took office three months later did such prosecutions become common and expensive.
Someone, it seems, was looking out for Jerry Brown.
Ann Louise Bardach is author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington and the acclaimed Cuba Confidential. She is Daily Beast contributor, a PEN/USA award winning reporter, a member of the Brookings Institution Cuba Study Project, and was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has written for The New York Times, Washington Post Outlook, Los Angeles Times, and The Atlantic. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, Today, and CNN, NPR among others.
San Francisco Sentinel » Blog Archives » JERRY BROWN BROKE THE LAW ON VISIT WITH FIDEL
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