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Inside
NCR
Summer has arrived in Missouri and
Kansas. Its hot. Last night there was a hint of the kind of thunderstorms
that happen only in the Midwest. Ive seen Noreasters rip up the
Jersey Coast and seen the flooding results, farther inland, of hurricanes. But
nothing Ive experienced, weatherwise, is quite so majestic as a Midwest
thunderstorm. Maybe its because out here you can see so much sky at one
time.
I wish it were as easy to detect the currents of change afoot, to
know the path, for instance, of our open-ended, ill-defined war on terror; to
understand the fitful and uneven trajectory of our Mideast policy. By dribs and
drabs we get the pieces of a larger picture that can seem ominous. Why is the
FBI allowed to investigate library records? What other civil liberties, once
assumed, are being re-engineered by Attorney General John Ashcroft? Why would a
president, confronted with the frightening evidence from his own bureaucracy on
the matter of global warming, tell the people essentially that we have to learn
to live with it?
This is turning out to be a strange summer. In the midst of all
that is going on in the wider world, the church is in crisis and I am doubtful,
after spending several days in Dallas watching bishops wrestle with the sex
abuse scandal, that we have seen the end of this, or even the end of the worst
of it.
The hope? You see some of it in these pages week after week. Even
in the darkest moments, there is evidence of incredible fidelity, of wonderful
imagination and faith. If there is a glimmer of hope to come out of the current
crisis it is the overwhelming evidence that this business of being church is
not just a project of bishops and priests. It is essentially a community of
people, all people.
Eventually the storm, even if it leaves behind some lasting
damage, will move on.
Speaking of hope-filled people, I am
pleased to announce the appointments to the NCR board of two new
members, Melanne Verveer, former adviser to President Clinton and
chief-of-staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton, and Fr. Jayson J. Landeza, pastor
of St. Columba Catholic Church in Oakland, Calif.
Verveer has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit and
public service organizations. She was previously executive vice president of
People for the American Way and played a key role in the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1990, the Civil Rights Restoration Act, the National and
Community Service Act, the Reauthorization of the National Endowments for the
Arts and Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She once
served as coordinator for urban policy and civil rights at the U.S. Catholic
Conference. She currently is chair of Vital Voices Global Partnership, an
organization dedicated to promoting womens roles in building strong
communities and nations.
Landeza, who notes in his curriculum vitae that he is of Filipino,
Chinese, Hawaiian and Irish ethnicity, is pastor of a largely African- American
parish. In the past he has ministered among widely diverse congregations in
California. He is active in the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, the
National Association for Lay Ministry and the National Association of Catholic
Youth Ministers. He has trained at the Xavier University, New Orleans,
Institute for Black Catholic Studies, serves as chaplain to a number of public
agencies and retains membership on a host of civic and church-related boards in
the Oakland area.
-- Tom Roberts
My e-mail address is troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, July 5,
2002
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