Millennials: You’ll Need $4.5 Million to Retire

Today, I read an alarming report that said (among other things) that Americans are guessing at how much money they need to retire… and they are guessing wildly wrong. For example, the median Millennial “guesstimated” that he would need a $500,000 nest egg to retire.

After forty years of inflation, this will buy you two apples and a hair shirt.
After forty years of inflation, this much latinum will buy you two apples and a hair shirt.

This is great if you have generous children willing to support you, or if you enjoy eating cat food. Otherwise, Millennials, we need to shape up.

To be fair, Millennials are not being uniquely stupid here. Our parents in GenX and the Baby Boom (aka “The Olds”) are roughly the same amount of dumb about retirement. But I’m not talking to them, because (1) the Olds are so much closer to retirement they’re beyond my help, and (2) they are going to retire into a functional Social Security system, so, while their own irresponsibility might ruin their plans, it won’t ruin their lives.

But the first Millennials don’t start retiring until 2049. The Social Security Trust Fund will be empty in 2035.  Do the math.

Social Security will still exist after 2035, since the Trust Fund is only one part of its funding, but the Olds’ refusal to deal with its massive long-term funding problem now means that it is likely to pay our generation less than we were promised. You can pretty much count on receiving at least half your scheduled benefit. In fact, it’s very likely you’ll get 75% of your benefit. But beyond that? It depends on the Olds’ willingness to raise taxes on the rich, and have you seen their voting records? So let’s assume our parents are going to mess this up (as usual) and leave us with the bill (as usual), as they have on everything from student loans to the home mortgage interest deduction. You’re going to have a lean Social Security check, so you need to make sure you have enough saved up for yourself.

How much is “enough”?

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Seminarian Testament #3: Aidan Toombs

EDITOR’S NOTE: In November, I put out a call for statements from priests, ex-seminarians, and ex-seminary staff. I think we, the laity, need to assess what exactly is going on in Catholic seminaries, both good and bad, and this is a space where I’ll allow people who have been there to say whatever they feel needs saying. Thank you to Aidan Toombs for sending me this.

My name is Aidan Toombs, and, until last month, I was a seminarian at Pope St. John XXIII, a national seminary for late vocations near Boston, Mass. I was in my second year of Theology. But, the week before Thanksgiving, I packed up my car with all my belongings and withdrew from seminary, and formation, in the middle of the term.

Last May, I discovered that another seminarian in my class was stealing from me – using my credit card without my knowledge and electronically transferring funds out of my checking account into his credit card account.

The seminary’s response to the theft is an example of the efforts we hear of too often by Church authorities to cover up wrongdoing and focus on blaming the victim, attacking his character and credibility, rather than holding the perpetrator accountable. It’s also an example of the culture of secrecy that apparently reigns in the Church and seminaries today. And that’s why I felt it was important to submit my statement – this needs to change.

After I discovered the theft, I shared the information with my Vocation Director for his guidance as to how to proceed. On his advice, I told the Rector of the seminary what happened. When the other student learned I had told the seminary, he sent me an angry e-mail making vague threats to defame me to the Rector. I didn’t bother to respond to him – I knew I hadn’t done anything that was in any way inappropriate. In fact, I forwarded his e-mail myself to the Rector and my bishop.

I wanted to report the theft from my checking account to the police – because what he did was a crime and he needed to be held accountable. But, my bishop strongly advised that I wait for the seminary to address the issue. So I waited.

Then, just days before seminary was to start this fall, I was shocked to learn that the other student was being allowed to return to seminary. The first day back, the Rector called the student and me to a meeting with himself, the Vice Rector, and the school psychologist. No one told me why we were having the meeting (or why a psychologist needed to be there!). The psychologist questioned me at length about my past generosity to this student. I got the feeling he was looking for nefarious motives on my part, which was very odd. I had been generous with this student, but I had been (and am) generous with everybody.

The psychologist tried to push the other student to take some accountability and make some sort of apology, but he had a really hard time of it. The student was unwilling to admit to any wrongdoing. It went something like this: “Don’t you think it’s wrong to use someone’s credit card to such an extent, and without his knowledge?” “Well, I guess so. I’m sorry if there was a misunderstanding.” As to the theft from my checking account … incredibly, he simply maintained that he had no idea who had transferred the funds into his account! And the Rector and psychologist didn’t bother to challenge his ludicrous non-defense.

Then the psychologist felt compelled to share items from my psychological evaluation (which is a standard part of every student’s application to seminary, and is strictly confidential). He started by saying, “It says in your psychological evaluation that … .” Although the comments he began to share were favorable, having to do with my generous character, he had no right to share any of my evaluation with another student! I stopped him mid-sentence and reminded him that I had not given consent for the sharing of my evaluation with anyone except my diocese and the seminary administration. What this psychologist did (reading aloud from a psychological evaluation to third parties without the consent of the one evaluated) was probably illegal and certainly unethical. The whole meeting was bizarre.

By this time, I had had enough of waiting for the student to be held accountable by the seminary, and was getting the feeling that nothing would be done. I reported the theft to the police, and then gave the Rector a copy of the police report. At this point, I still naively thought the Rector, and the student’s diocese, were interested in discerning the truth. But the Rector’s only comment to me was, “Why are you giving me this?” after which he ushered me out of his office.

I was puzzled. Why wouldn’t the Rector want to know that someone had filed a criminal complaint against one of his students?! And certainly he’d want to know the contents of the police report, for the sake of the safety of his students, not to mention the people of the diocese for which the student was studying. I assumed the Rector would consider it his responsibility to thoroughly investigate any allegations of criminal behavior by his seminarians. But I was wrong.

The student was then charged with a crime by the Weston police, and a date was set for the student to appear in court. I notified the Rector that the student had been charged. And now the Rector put the pressure on. He called me in to his office and told me that the other student had said, some time ago, that I was engaging in specific sexual activity over the summer (i.e., while as a seminarian). These allegations were false, and I saw them as clearly retaliatory and related to the threatening e-mail I had received from the student last summer.

(And think about it – if I were engaging in any illicit activity last summer, and the Rector had known about it, why did it only become an issue once the student was being charged with a crime? Shouldn’t it have been an issue as soon as the Rector learned of it?!)

After dropping this bombshell on me, the Rector dismissed me from his office with the comment that I should let him know if I had any other information about this. I felt that I was now in danger of being dismissed from seminary for sexual misconduct. So I defended myself by submitting testimonials from some longtime business colleagues and old friends who attested to my character, conduct and chastity. (Imagine how embarrassing it was to ask them for this.) The Rector was not happy with the response, however. He said to me, “I didn’t ask you for this,” and, “You shouldn’t have gone public with this.” So apparently, he wanted me to give him more information … but not if it would serve as a defense against the defamatory statements.

I learned that the defamation was also shared with the faculty, because the allegations against me came up in my advising sessions. Both my Formation Advisor and my Spiritual Director at seminary expressed that they had heard the allegations in faculty meetings, and that these allegations created obstacles to my formation. I was left to wonder – who else was in these faculty meetings and heard this about me? I felt self-conscious and embarrassed.

In my next meeting with the Rector (the Vice Rector always attended these meetings as well), the Rector came down on me hard. He clearly wanted me to drop the charges. He literally said that he blamed me for the theft, because of my past generosity to the student (in other words, blaming the victim for bringing the crime upon himself); and, he questioned my credibility, saying it was possible I had completely fabricated the theft in an effort to get the student dismissed because he “had something” on me, referencing the student’s defamation.

But of course the idea that I fabricated the theft (for any reason) was preposterous … he was effectively proposing that I had stolen from myself, and reported the non-theft to the bank by signed affidavit, and abruptly closed my account (thus incurring fees, and costs in buying new checks, etc.), and disingenuously asked my Vocation Director for his opinion what I should do before reporting it to the seminary, and filed a false police report (which is itself a crime) … all as part of a grand scheme to get this guy ejected. And anyway, how could it both be true that it was my fault the student stole from me, and that the theft never happened because I had just made it up? These are mutually exclusive theories. The Rector’s “reasoning” was bereft of logic.

The Rector also said I should never have gone to law enforcement, and that by doing so I had acted in complete disobedience to my bishop and my Spiritual Director. The latter was simply not true; both men had told me they supported my going to the police to report the theft. The Rector was just making stuff up. I tried to correct him but he talked over me. He wouldn’t hear any of it.

And then the comment that was most telling – he said, angrily, “Don’t you understand that if he [the other student] admits to this, he’ll have to be dismissed?!” Now it was all clear. For whatever reason, the Rector wanted that student to remain in formation, regardless of what he had done, and regardless of what the truth was. Indeed, the Rector didn’t want to hear the student’s admission, he didn’t want to know the truth, if it would mean having to hold the student accountable.

The Rector had every reason to believe what I was telling him, and to investigate further. I had given him copies of my bank statements, the police report, e-mails, etc. But he refused to look at the evidence in front of him … and what evidence he did see, he refused to believe. He chose not to investigate allegations of criminal activity by his student, much less to report them to law enforcement.

But doesn’t the Church have a moral obligation to investigate allegations of misconduct by its men, whether priests or seminarians, and to provide to victims, as well as the parishioners and public these men serve, a complete accounting of the misconduct?

Rather than investigating the misconduct, the Rector instead chose to find reasons not to consider my (the victim’s) allegations “credible.” He used a warped version of my (the victim’s) personal life, obtained from the other student’s (the perpetrator’s) unsubstantiated defamatory comments, to discredit me, without permitting me to defend myself. This is something we hear happening again and again – instead of investigating allegations of misconduct, Church authorities attack the credibility of the victim and attack his character.

What is also troubling is that, because this is a seminary for late vocations, that other student is not just a kid out of college. He is a middle-aged man, approximately 40 years old! And here he is, a “man of the Church” in formation to become a priest, using others’ credit cards to support his lifestyle, taking money out of their checking account to pay his credit card, lying about his actions and lying about the others’ character to protect himself. He is financially irresponsible and he is dishonest. And the Rector (and the student’s diocese) knew all this.

Also troubling is that the seminary is not following the stated, “consistent” policy of the Archdiocese of Boston regarding the reporting of criminal activity to law enforcement. The statement by Cardinal Sean O’Malley on seminary review that was posted on the archdiocesan website on October 11, 2018 states: “if potential criminal activity is discovered [at any seminary in the Archdiocese of Boston], you can be assured that it will be promptly referred to law enforcement, as has been the consistent policy of the Archdiocese of Boston with any allegations of criminal issues.” Well, that sounds nice, but my allegation of criminal issues was not “promptly referred to law enforcement.” Just the opposite: I was not only chastised for referring criminal activity to law enforcement myself, but, in addition, my credibility and character were attacked, and I was pressured to drop the charges that were brought by law enforcement.

After all of this happened, it was clear to me that my life in seminary would be hell if I didn’t drop the charges. Also, as I was still a seminarian, the virtue of obedience was used to pressure me to do so. And so I dropped the charges.

I remained in continual distress, however, and could not find peace in the seminary in light of all that had happened, especially what the student had said about me. I felt that my dismissal from seminary was a constant possibility. The other student’s lies and defamation of my character had not only been given credence by the Rector, but as I mentioned, they made their way to other faculty, and also to my bishop. Thus, they damaged my credibility and my standing in the seminary, as well as my prospects in the wider Church and my advancement in the Church.

Ultimately, I felt I had no option but to leave seminary. It is a terrible waste. I really felt that I had a vocation, and it was affirmed on all sides. I had been voted the class president this year, I was a straight A student with excellent evaluations from my pastoral assignments – according to my Formation Advisor, the best he had ever seen. I could have been a good priest.

As to the Rector’s gross mishandling of the theft, the important lesson he gave that other student (who remains in formation for the priesthood at Pope St. John XXIII to this day), is that when you’re caught in wrongdoing you should just deny it, hold fast to your denial, and deflect attention from yourself with false allegations against the victim. If you do that, the Church will protect you. On the other hand, if you report misconduct, especially if you go outside the Church and to the authorities – look what happens.

I still believe in the Church, if not in the people who administer her. But I must admit that it’s difficult to participate in the Church and to practice my faith any more, and my spiritual growth has certainly come to a standstill from this.

I hope that by telling my story some good can come from this, and that perhaps some change can be effected. And I hope that this does not happen to any other seminarian.

Do you have a story, good or bad, to tell about your experience in seminary? For the good of the Church, please reach out to me. –JJH

UPDATE 28 January 2019:

Last week, I received a number of anonymous and semi-anonymous complaints about this story, alleging that Mr. Toombs had concealed, downplayed, or outright lied about important parts of this story in order to destroy the reputation of the seminarian who (allegedly) stole from him. These claims led ChurchMilitant.com (which briefly shared this piece, with Mr. Toombs’ permission) to remove it from their website. Although these claims came from no identifiable source, calumny is an extremely serious charge, so I looked into it as best I could with my concededly limited resources.

I was not able to substantiate any of the claims made against Mr. Toombs, nor were any of the critics willing to go on the record with their disputes against Mr. Toombs’ account. For his part, Mr. Toombs denied categorically all the relevant allegations against him, insisting that the criticisms I received are part and parcel of the same campaign of defamation he describes in this testament. I wish to thank him for his cooperation and candid answers over the past few days as I grilled him on a variety of topics relating to his seminary experience and his past. Since I was not able to substantiate those allegations, I will not recount them here.

Mr. Toombs also shared with me a number of documents — the police report described in this testament, various court filings, and a lengthy sworn statement signed by Mr. Toombs as part of a lawsuit.  I carefully reviewed these documents. I found the documents and this testament consistent with one another. It is my understanding that to lie in one of these statements would constitute a low-grade felony. While I am never closed to the possibility that I’ve made a mistake, at this time, I can find no reason to correct or retract Mr. Toombs’s testament.

Despite all that, I would, ordinarily, still be inclined to remove the names of all specific individuals from this piece. In this series, I am trying to get a sense for what is going on in the Church, not publicly name-and-shame individual seminarians and seminary officers, and, if facts are in dispute, there’s no need to keep their names front and center. However, there’s nothing to remove. Mr. Toombs had the same attitude in this piece, thus named no specific individuals involved. I myself did not know the name of the seminarian in question until I reviewed the police report — and, now that I know it, I plan to try very hard to forget it.

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Seminarian Testament #2: Anon “Assistant”

EDITOR’S NOTE: In November, I put out a call for statements from priests, ex-seminarians, and ex-seminary staff. I think we, the laity, need to assess what exactly is going on in Catholic seminaries, both good and bad, and this is a space where I’ll allow people who have been there to say whatever they feel needs saying. Here is one such person. Thank you to the individual who sent me this.

by Anonymous

Peter Stine’s testament filled in a lot of gaps for me. I knew Peter in passing back then, and I had wondered why he up and left Sacred Heart so quickly. Thanks for publishing it. My own, similar, story has been on my chest for a long while and I think now is the time to get it off. I am now a member of a corporation that will make it impossible for me to get permission to name names (even my own), but this is what happened to me:

My home diocese has high numbers of vocations and a great reputation, but it, too, had a kind of “system,” and I was pushed out of it, though maybe in a different way. The end of my seminary career came rather suddenly, although the writing had been painted on the wall for some time.

The vocations director for my diocese and his cadre of close supporters wanted extroverts with a certain knack for fundraising (like himself) as candidates for priesthood. To correct my deficiency in these areas, I was sent on a “spirituality year.” Surprise surprise, I was assigned to be the personal assistant of another diocesan priest… one who happened to be a close relative of the vocations director. I was kept busy, starting at about 3:30 am and working until 12 am the following morning. I could maybe get four hours of sleep on the weekends. Some activities were legitimate, like helping in the school and at Masses/ liturgical functions, but I’m not sure picking his drunk self up from a lake cabin on the weekends at 1 am qualifies as useful formation.

The 900 calories per day diet he put me on for 7 months wasn’t great either. I dropped 80lbs in 7 months. It was weight loss, which admittedly, was needed, but far from healthy. I would cook fancy meals for him and his guests, but was expressly forbidden from getting any myself, so as to not ” spoil my diet.”  In addition, he made me get rid of most of my belongings, including my truck, 1/2 of my guns, even my health insurance (with no diocesan back-up planned) all for “formation.” If I questioned anything, I was doubting his just authority and would be dismissed. Yet, despite everything, I did it to the best of my ability.

In the end, all it took was one vaguely worded letter of complaint that I was not a suitable candidate – from one of the vocations director’s closest friends, go figure – and I was out. I got a text from the vocations director two days before Christmas in which he indicated that all was well and that I was doing great. When he arrived, however, he had a look on his face that suggested otherwise. 9am: I was golden. 10 am: I was not good for the job and out. That was it. Merry Christmas to me, right? There was no explanation or exit strategy; the decision was made. It was nice seeing you, goodbye.

After everything, I was essentially kicked to the curb and spent the next year in a deep depression. I even went so far as considering ending it all, but didn’t want to leave a mess for my landlord. I have since bounced back, thanks be to God, and am doing quite well now. But the sudden end to it did a number on me.

Sorry that got long. Like I said, it’s been on my chest for a while. Sorry to offload.  Rant over.

While this is published anonymously, the author confirmed his own identity for me, as well as the name of the vocations director named in the story. I verified that the author was a seminarian of the diocese in question at the same time as that vocations director, and confirmed that said vocations director served alongside a close relative. The author remains a practicing Catholic.

Do you have a story, good or bad, to tell about your experience in seminary? For the good of the Church, please reach out to me. –JJH

 

 

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Seminarian Testament #1: Peter Stine

EDITOR’S NOTE: In November, I put out a call for statements from priests, ex-seminarians, and ex-seminary staff. I think we, the laity, need to assess what exactly is going on in Catholic seminaries, both good and bad, and this is a space where I’ll allow people who have been there to say whatever they feel needs saying. Here is one such person. Thank you to Peter for sending me this. –JJH

Vere dico vobis

by Peter Stine

I am a faithful, orthodox Catholic, who only wants the best for the Church as she grapples with the latest wave of the sexual abuse crisis. Thanks to the most recent revelations, we now know this crisis spread to the seminaries decades ago and festered there for a generation. I have been in seminary recently, and many people have asked me what my experience in seminary was like. Is there still a culture of homosexuality? Is the culture of secrecy and clericalism still in place? I believe that I may be able to shed some light on these questions.

I am not a victim of the sexual attentions of any priest or prelate. However, I did witness (and experience) the abuse of clerical power.  In fact, I was drummed out of the seminary because of it.

You may say that I, therefore, have an axe to grind with the Church and so anything that I say about the current situation is tainted and should be paid no heed. I cannot pretend that I am not angry, but I shall do my best to tell you the truth, uncolored by my feelings. You will have to decide whether or not I succeed. I am going to use the actual names of the people and places involved, not because I am seeking a vendetta, but because I believe we must break the Church’s habit of cloaking serious problems in shadow and innuendo. I do not hate the Church; I love her. However, we must distinguish between the Church as infallible Divine Institution and the sinful human beings—myself included—who imperfectly serve her.

Why am I writing this now and not earlier? Part of it has to do with the fact that I believe that the hierarchy is focusing on the consequences of the abuses, rather than the environment that allowed them to flourish. They seek quick fixes when only systemic reform will help. Another reason is that to write some of this requires that I dig up parts of my past that I would rather not face, as they are extremely painful. And, yes, a lot of my hesitancy comes from the simple fear that, if I release this, I will be permanently censured and forbidden from applying to any seminary ever again. I firmly believe that priesthood is what the Lord wants for me, but I have absolutely no faith in the current, human, institutional part of the Church to act justly in this regard.

And yet…. Si Deus quoddam vult, fiet. I have avoided writing this for a very long time, but it has come back to me repeatedly. This time, when my friend James asked to tell him about my experience in seminary, I said yes. I pray that this is what the Lord wishes.

Having both qualified and discredited myself, let us proceed.

When people ask about the seminary in light of the abuse crisis, the main questions they ask are about homosexuality and clericalism. Many say that the abuse crisis was precipitated by one or the other. I believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle. There is some truth to both claims and both, to varying degrees, are currently present within the Church.
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Call for Seminarian Testaments

It seems that the reality inside some (many?) Catholic seminaries does not match the brochure.

I know several people in this picture. Some advanced to priesthood. Others are married. All are good guys.
I know several people in this picture. Some advanced to priesthood. Others are married. All are good guys.

We’ve all seen public accounts by priests and ex-seminarians (here is just one) describing Catholic seminaries as hothouses where clerical authoritarianism, combined with tolerance or encouragement of sexual immorality, drives good men out of priestly vocations. This (allegedly) leaves behind a clergy where yes-men, political chameleons, and sexually active gays (and straight allies) are overrepresented… the next generation of the “lavender mafia.” Many of us are familiar with Goodbye, Good Men, Michael Rose’s book about how this culture operated during the ’70s and ’80s, where it advanced under the flag of theological liberalism. I’ve heard enough hair-raising accounts of seminaries in those days to be confident that Rose’s narrative is basically correct.

However, as The Scandal rolls into its 33rd year, we are seeing indications that, even as conservatives have largely changed the theological orientations of most Catholic seminaries toward Tradition, the underlying culture of clerical authoritarianism and sexual impropriety… maybe has not changed so much as we’d like to believe. Cardinal McCarrick’s recent and notorious abuse of his own seminarians, even as JP2 elevated him to cardinal and McCarrick served as the bishops’ PR guy on abuse, seems to be but the tip of the iceberg (look at Lincoln).

I know a lot of recent ex-sems, and I hear stories. Some of them are very good! Most ex-sems I know have many very fond memories of their time in seminary.

But some of the stories are… weird. Any one of them, I might dismiss as an aberration or somebody with an axe to grind. In the aggregate, though? Combined with everything else we’ve been seeing in the press? I have found reason for concern.

But I don’t have the full picture. Outside the clergy, I’m not sure anybody really knows what overall American seminary culture is like.

I think it’s time to change that.

If you were recently a Catholic seminarian or seminary employee, I’d like to hear from you. What was your seminary like? What’s working? What’s not? Did you find a culture where clericalism and/or sexual immorality were problems, or no? If so, how so?

Write me at james.j.heaney@gmail.com, and I’ll publish what you have to say right here on De Civitate.

A few ground rules:

  • I’m asking about recent seminarian experiences, particularly since the abuse scandal went national in the U.S. in 2002. So if you haven’t been in a seminary since before 2003, this isn’t directed to you.
  • If you are currently at a seminary, this probably isn’t for you, either. It’s going to be tough to be objective or candid about your experience while you’re still having it.
  • I’m happy — in fact, eager — to publish both positive and negative accounts of your seminary experiences. My intention is to get a sense of what seminaries are like today. If it turns out seminaries are, by and large, doing great, that would be fantastic (if somewhat surprising) news.
  • I will publish anonymous accounts. However, if you choose anonymity:
    • You may not name names, either of seminary personnel or the seminary you attended. The line between speaking uncomfortable truths and gossiping is whether you put your own name on it.
    • You still have to tell me who you are, so I can do some cursory verification that you are who you claim to be.
  • If you publish under your own name, you can be as specific as you consider prudent and just.
    • On the one hand, don’t commit detraction.
    • On the other hand, don’t delete or obfuscate important details just because you’re afraid somebody somewhere might accuse you of detraction. McCarrick survived another decade in office because one Dr. Fitzgibbons wouldn’t go on the record about it in 2002 out of fear for McCarrick’s reputation. Our Catholic reflex to talk about troubles without identifying the troublemakers has gone on long enough, hasn’t it?
  • I may lightly edit for spelling, grammar, clarity, and so forth. I won’t go further than that (unless asked). Even if I disagree with what you say, I’ll print it. This is a soapbox for you to speak honestly about your experience of the seminary. My job is to get out of the way and let you say what you feel needs saying, be it 100 words or 100,000.

Again, my email address is james.j.heaney@gmail.com. I have a brand-new baby at home (Irene Amelia, born November 5th, named for St. Irenaeus of Lyon, she’s great), so I might not get back to you immediately… but I will get back to you.

I hope this project sparks enough response that we are able to gain a more complete picture of what seminary life is like for young Catholics today.

And I hope the news is better than I’m expecting.

UPDATE: I have received and posted several testaments, linked here:

#1: Peter Stine

#2: Anonymous Assistant

#3: Aidan Toombs

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2018 West Saint Paul Municipal Voters’ Guide

Come on over to West St. Paul / Summer, spring, winter, fall / we've got it all / in West St. Paul (SOURCE: the town anthem, available on YouTube)
Come on over to West St. Paul / Summer, spring, winter, fall / we’ve got it all / in West St. Paul (SOURCE: the city anthem)

Fellow residents of West Saint Paul:

Tomorrow, we vote. I have done a little research on the races in our city, and I have some gentle recommendations.

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“Our Myth, Their Lie” at Commonweal

Commonweal has published my article on the clerical sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. You can read the whole thing there, and really you should—publishing a mag like Commonweal is not cheap, and your clicks help them—but here’s sort of the thesis of the article:

Ten years ago, I believed a myth. In the beginning, there was Vatican II. It was good but messy, and the Bad Catholics hijacked it to undermine doctrine. They took over seminaries and turned them into cesspools where heresy was mandatory and depravity rampant. Then Pope John Paul II came along. He drove out the Bad Catholics and cleaned up the seminaries. Too late! The Bad Catholics had already committed terrible crimes, which were covered up without the pope’s awareness. In 2002, their abuses exploded into public view, and the JPII Catholics got blamed for crimes committed by a dying generation of clerics. The JPII bishops took it on the chin, but they fixed the problem with the Dallas Charter. Then Benedict XVI, the great theologian, appointed orthodox bishops who would carry forward the renewal. The horrors of the Scandal were behind us. The two primordial forces of the postconciliar church, orthodoxy and heresy, had fought a great battle, and orthodoxy had been vindicated.

[…]

Twin Cities Catholics like me came face-to-face with an unpleasant fact: the orthodox Good Clerics hadn’t taken over from the Bad “Spirit of Vatican II” Clerics and cleaned house. The Good Clerics were buddies with the Bad Clerics. They did everything in their power to protect the Bad Clerics—even violating moral, civil, and canon law on their behalf. We’d believed there were two sides in the Church: orthodoxy and heresy. We often cheered for the clerics on our “team” and booed the other guys. But we were wrong. Everyone in the chancery was working together…against us.

My thanks to Commonweal for running what I think is an important piece.

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Vote Pam Myhra for Minnesota State Auditor

If you have this sign in your yard, you are a boring person. CORRECT, yes... but boring.
If you have this sign in your yard, you are a boring person. CORRECT, yes… but boring.

State Auditor is the single statewide office left where I’m willing to vote for candidates from either party—and, in my two auditor elections so far, I’ve done just that. I’ve voted for our current auditor of 11 years’ standing, Rebecca Otto, a Democrat. I’ve also voted, in a different election, for one of her Republican challengers.

After all, it’s not really a partisan job. The auditor’s duty is oversight, investigation, and reporting. She doesn’t set the agenda or the rules; she makes sure the letter and spirit of the law are being followed and that the taxpayer’s dollar actually goes where the taxpayers’ representatives send it.

So, when I’m looking at an Auditor candidate, I don’t ask, “So, what’s your stance on illegal immigration, gun control, and the plowing in Saint Paul?” That’s not the auditor’s job. I first ask about her qualifications. I then ask whether she’s going to run the auditor’s office fairly and impartially. (With the way the offices of Attorney General and Secretary of State have been politicized in this and other states over the years, it’s clear even the non-partisan offices are at risk and must be vigilantly protected.)

In 2018, we’re faced with an easy choice for auditor. The Republicans have nominated Pam Myhra, who is a Certified Public Accountant. The Democrats have nominated Julie Blaha, who is a math teacher.

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A Kavanaugh Compromise

Photo: Jim Bourg, Reuters
Photo: Jim Bourg, Reuters

This post has been updated. See the bottom of the post for details.

Senate Republicans should offer Senate Democrats a deal:

(1) Kavanaugh is rejected.
(2) Feinstein resigns or is expelled.
(3) Expedited hearing schedule for Kavanaugh’s replacement… or no hearings for a nominee who has been through Senate hearings during this Congress.

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My Chat with Judge Hardiman (Or: Harriet Miers and the Hasty Tweet)

Last night, about an hour before Judge Thomas Hardiman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit phoned me, I jumped into a Twitter thread:

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Not all of my readers were tuned into judicial politics back in the days of Miguel Estrada and the Gang of 14, so let me explain that tweet a bit before I get to the exciting stuff.

Harriet Miers was George W. Bush’s original nominee to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Miers was the White House counsel and a close adviser to the President… a President who had recently won an election thanks to Catholic and evangelical “values voters.” Calling her “a pit bull in size 6 shoes,” President Bush vouched for her integrity, her legal chops, and her work ethic.

The problem was, Miers had a very thin record. She’d worked as a commercial litigator before becoming the personal lawyer of then-Governor Bush. She was an able lawyer for her clients, but there was no public record showing what she herself thought about the Constitution, the judicial branch, or the pressing issues of the day. President Bush believed that his personal assurances would suffice.

They did not. Republicans had been burned several times before. Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter had all been nominated by Republican presidents who gave assurances that the nominees would turn out to be excellent, judicially conservative judges.* Once on the Supreme Court, all three showed their true colors… and those colors did not have much to do with the Constitution.

All three supported (and, in fact, crafted) the plurality in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which Michael Stokes Paulsen rightly called “the worst constitutional decision of all time.” Kennedy is famous for declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right in Obergefell, a decision which, even if you agree with its conclusion, is totally incoherent both internally and in light of Kennedy’s own precedents (especially Casey!). O’Connor struck down a modest law against partial-birth abortion in 2000’s Stenberg v. Carhart and personally saved affirmative action from history’s dustbin in the bizarre Bollinger decision. And Souter simply joined the Court’s left wing outright, voting reliably with Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Stephens for most of his tenure.

So President Bush’s personal assurances did not reassure the thrice-burned right wing, especially the pro-lifers, however well-liked he was. Activists had trusted the words of Edwin Meese, John Sununu, and George H.W. Bush decades earlier, let nominees slip by with little paper trail, and so lost their chance at the Court for a generation. There was simply nothing out there to demonstrate Harriet Miers’ bona fides as a textualist who followed the Constitution. There was no way of knowing whether she would be another Scalia… or another Souter.

Conservative martyr Robert Bork called Miers’ nomination a “slap in the face” to the conservative legal movement. Unable to sell the nomination to the very demographic who had just re-elected him, Bush was forced to “allow” Miers to withdraw a few weeks after nominating her. The seat went to Samuel Alito instead.

Which brings us to Thomas Hardiman. Judge Hardiman sits today on the Third Circuit. He has shown up on President Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist twice in a row, losing out to Judge Gorsuch in 2017 and Judge Kavanaugh in 2018. He has faced some important issues in his time in the judiciary, and he has often acquitted himself as a textualist. His work on the Second Amendment is particularly well-regarded among conservatives. It is believed that he appeals to President Trump in part because of his phenomenal biography: Hardiman is one of too few federal judges who come from outside the Ivy League, with an undergraduate degree from Notre Dame and a J.D. from Georgetown, which he paid for by working nights as a taxi driver.

However, I have concerns about Judge Hardiman, as do some others. As with Ms. Miers, though I bear Judge Hardiman no ill will, I am not confident that Justice Hardiman would adhere to the Constitution on the issues that matter most. (P.S. As with everything in our utterly dishonest judicial politics, that’s code for “Roe v. Wade.”)

And, as you can see, I said as much on Twitter! So far, so regular Thursday. But my night was about to take a surprising turn.

A few minutes after my tweet, I got an email with no body but a heck of a FROM line:

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(I’ve obscured the full email address because, while I’m sure it isn’t a state secret, Judge Hardiman’s professional email address is also not, as far as I know, public knowledge.)

I wrote back with my phone number, and, 90 seconds later, I got a call from the 412 area code. The man on the other end introduced himself as Thomas Hardiman, and said he wanted to touch base with me.

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