Week 4 of the 2017 NFL Season

TIME: Sunday, 12:50 pm

PLACE: An apartment in a gentrified section of a blue state city

Old Hippie, Social Justice Warrior, and Woke Hipster sit snacking on kale chips and kraut frittatas, sipping IPA beer, waiting for the game to start …

OLD HIPPIE: So why are we watching football this week? I’ve never watched a game in my life.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: The only football I’m aware of is fútbol. You know, soccer. We’re like the only country that doesn’t recognize the greatness of soccer.

WOKE HIPSTER: I watched a four-hour World Cup game once. Venezuela beat Cuba, 1-0.

OLD HIPPIE: But football is so … warlike.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: We have to support the players. They’re honoring the sacrifices made by our fathers and grandfathers by kneeling during the national anthem. It’s what our fathers and grandfathers would have wanted.

WOKE HIPSTER: They fought and died for our right to protest! Even things they routinely did out of love for this country. It’s like the only thing that makes this country great.

OLD HIPPIE: Look – there’s barely anyone in the stands. Maybe the owners should let the homeless or some undocumented immigrants in to watch the games.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: Why are there soldiers and all that flag waving on the field? Is it to remind viewers of America’s imperialism under Republican presidents?

WOKE HIPSTER: Hey, they’re showing highlights from last week’s games. I don’t see anyone kneeling though. Just a bunch of running and throwing and kicking that brown ball thing.

OLD HIPPIE: I’m not comfortable with all this violence. Hitting and tackling. Isn’t there a better way to play football?

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: How about each team tries to raise awareness for some worthy cause, like man-made climate change or transgender bathrooms, and the two teams who raise the most awareness get to be in the Super Bowl?

WOKE HIPSTER: Pope Francis could umpire the Super Bowl. He’s really great when it comes to climate change, and he’s totally nonjudgmental.

OLD HIPPIE: How would we decide which team raised the most awareness?

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: By whichever one raises the most money?

WOKE HIPSTER: I’m not comfortable with money. It just oozes privilege and is so patriarchal.

OLD HIPPIE: And these names! We’ll have to change some of these team names.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: We’ll need a federal judge for that. I’ll call my friend at the ACLU.

WOKE HIPSTER: The New York Giants! What, are there no short people in New York?

OLD HIPPIE: So ableist. If I was a dwarf I would be uncomfortable rooting for the Giants.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: Wait – can we say ‘dwarf’?

WOKE HIPSTER: And what if you’re a very tall person? Surely not everyone on the Giants is, uh, a giant. Sounds like appropriation to me.

OLD HIPPIE: Shhh! The game is starting. They’re playing the anthem. The players are taking a knee!

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: Quick, let’s take a knee in solidarity with our brothers in the NFL.

WOKE HIPSTER: When will women be allowed to play in the NFL?

OLD HIPPIE: I know, right? Hashtag women in the NFL now!

The Pope of Ambiguity

So now a group of 62 theologians, priests, and lay scholars have written a 25-page letter detailing what they regard as seven heretical positions propagating from Amoris Laetitia, Francis’ apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family. The letter is called a “filial correction” and such a thing has not been done in almost 700 years. The group sent the letter to Francis on August 11, and, as per Francis’ way of dealing with criticism, has been ignored for six weeks. Four days ago the group decided to publicize the letter.

The content of the filial correction as well as the signers can be seen here:

http://www.correctiofilialis.org/

You can even sign up to support the document at the website. I did.

I recommend reading it. I did.

Those in the know recall the “dubia” (Latin: doubts), a document sent to the Pope from four Cardinals asking for clarifications on five main points, such as, for example, “Can adulterers receive Holy Communion?” In the Pope’s exhortation Amoris Laetitia, one can vaguely read a “yes” to that question if one wishes to. And believe me, there are many out there who wish to.

Amoris Laetitia was released in April of 2016. The dubia was sent to Francis in July of 2016.

There was no response from the pope.

The Cardinals made the dubia public the following September, a year ago.

Still no response.

Then, in April of 2017, the Cardinals sent Francis a respectful letter requesting an audience regarding the dubia.

It was, and continues to be, ignored.

In the interim, two of the four writers of the dubia, Joachim Meisner and Carlo Caffaro, have died.

And now I expect the filial correction to be ignored as well.

So, regarding an apostolic exhortation that may – or may not (I’d like to know) – be filled with propositions antithetical to 2,000 years of Church teaching, there is utter silence coming from the Vatican. Fourteen months’ worth of silence.

Francis, the Pope of Ambiguity …

Radial Buckle Fracture

It never fails. Whenever tragedy strikes, I won’t have my cell phone on me. Admittedly, I only forget the phone somewhere (home, work) maybe once or twice a year. But, yeah, it never fails: when something bad happens, my cell phone will be M.I.A.

Wednesday, in a rush to get out of work with a clean desk and as many lose ends tied as possible since I was taking the next day off to watch the girls during a school closing, I left the phone on my desk. I moseyed on home via the scenic route, and, two minutes away from the town library where I habitually pick up Little One, I reached over to send her a text.

Phone wasn’t there. Dammit! I contemplated turning back, but figured a day with the cell phone (or electronic Honey Do leash, as I like to think of it) would be manageable.

I turned down the street where the library was and spotted my daughter red and sobby, surrounded by four of her friends.

I immediately pulled into the next parking lot and they brought her over. “What happened?” I asked from the window, assessing my soon-to-be teen.

Her face was the pink and splotchy mess that told me she’d just had a terrible cry. Then my eyes saw her arm – bandaged and bulging. “What happened?” I repeated, more urgently.

Turns out she and one of her friends were horsing around on a footbridge that spans the railroad tracks a quarter mile away. Little One lost her balance and tumbled down five stairs, depositing her full weight on the outside of her right wrist. She was instantly overwhelmed with pain, and her resourceful friends walked her to a nearby pharmacy, pooled their money together to buy some gauze, and one who just took a babysitting “Safe Sitter” class bandaged her up. Then they waited for me.

I thanked them, put Little One in the passenger seat, got Patch from Aftercare down the road. Then we raced straight to the emergency room of the local hospital a few miles away, the hospital where both my children were born. She was immediately seen, X-rayed, and given some Motrin. The X-rays revealed a buckle fracture and she was put in a soft cast.

(Right after leaving the hospital, we drove to my work so I could retrieve the cell phone, possible to avoid further tragedy down the road ...)

If I had been the one who fell, my bone would break. My bones, at the half-century mark, are like hollowed out old sticks. Really. So are, most likely, yours. Hers, being still twelve years old, are more like rubber bands. Mushy wet rubber bands, especially on the inside. Instead of breaking, the outside of the bone fractured where the radius connects with the wrist bones. There’s an outward bulge you can see on the X-ray, and that’s an effect of the buckling.

Well, the next day we had to visit our orthopedic pediatrician. Yes, we have one, with Patch’s ankle injury over the Christmas holiday and Little One’s prior wrist sprain the summer before. He’s a great guy, a little eccentric, a dry sense of humor, and we could listen to his monotonous delivery for hours. That cheered up Little One. Once the doctor reviewed the X-ray from the hospital and examined her arm and mobility, he decided to put her in a hard cast for two weeks.

“To make it kind of fun,” he added in a nerdy way that made Little One grin, “you can pick the color of the cast.” Then he began to recite his inventory: “We have red, pink, purple, yellow, blue, lime green, just plain white, …”

“Blue!” my daughter decided. It was her school color.

“Blue,” the doctor sighed to himself. “They always pick the blue …”

So despite the trauma of the past two days, she’s very excited. Her friends stopped by a couple times, once bearing Get Well gifts – an oinking green pig, some M&Ms, flowers. She has a respite from gym class and clarinet practice. And, she said to me, “I always wanted to have a cast!”

Here she is, rocking the blue: