To Kill A Mockingbird

I finished reading To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) by Nelle Harper Lee (better known as Harper Lee), though I watched the film several times.  (I almost always find it better to read a book after I watched a film adapted from it.  When I read a book first, I am usually disappointed by the film adaptation.)

I most enjoyed the outstanding writing this book displays.  Harper Lee constructed every line, every paragraph, every chapter very carefully.  She not only renders wonderful descriptions, she carefully structures a story that keeps you entertained, attentive, and eager to learn the lessons the story offers through its characters.

By using the perspective of the children, and especially Scout (Jean Louise Finch), the main character, it reminds you of your childhood.  However, Lee tempers this perspective because Scout narrates the story as an adult woman, reflecting back on her childhood.

(Nelle) Harper Lee

Harper Lee never wrote another book, and this became her only book.  Her one book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.  It still remains a bestseller, with 30 million copies in print.  In 1999, a poll conducted by the Library Journal voted it "Best Novel of the Century."  For this one book, President George W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.

Harper Lee got to write the book because friends she knew gave her a Christmas present in 1956 of a full year's wages along with a note, "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."  It shows the power of believing in someone you recognize has talent and supporting them.

Presidential Medal of Freedom

The story reflects many aspects of Harper Lee's childhood growing up in the South in the 1930s, including the racial prejudice of that time in that place.  However, a major theme Lee promotes in the story involves the moral education of Scout, and her brother, Jem, by their father, Atticus.  Atticus teaches not only by telling his children - he shows what he teaches by what he does - by providing an example by how he lives his life.


Atticus tells Scout, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.  He later demonstrates this by not reacting when someone spits in his face and calls him terrible names, daring him to fight.  He later explains to Jem, troubled by his father's lack of reaction, that he understood this man was frustrated and had to take it out on someone - and that he would rather have him take it out on himself rather than that man take it out on his own children.  Later in the story, Scout learns to look at the world from the perspective of Boo Radley, someone she was scared of earlier in the story.


If you have not read this book before, I encourage you to do so.  If you have not read it in awhile (many read it as a school assignment), I suggest you reread it.  You may find you have a different perspective on it now.

Handel's Messiah

I recently re-listened to Handel's work of genius, Messiah (some call it The Messiah, but the title is simply Messiah).  George Frederick Handel composed this superb work in 1741 in a mere 24 days.  However, he worked from a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jenning, whom he had worked together on a previous composition.

Messiah tells the story of Christ in uplifting music.  Handel organized it in 3 parts - Part 1: The Nativity; Part 2: The Resurrection and the Spread of the Gospel; and Part 3: Eternal Life.  The Jenning's text is all from the King James Bible (a beautiful poetic translation), and passages are repeated often in song, so the effect is like a lectio devina (a traditional Catholic practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and to increase the knowledge of God's Word).  So listening to it can be a meditative and spiritual experience.

However, Messiah is an oratoria, which is similar to an opera.  For many modern hearers unused to this, it can be hard to understand the words being sung.  So this time, I used Messiah: The Wordbook for the Oratorio, which has all the words carefully laid out in equisite font, as well as beautiful illustrative paintings by Barry Moser.  I highly recommend getting this book (your local library probably carries it) if you listen to Messiah, as it will immensely help you in understanding it.


Messiah transcends Christians, its music enjoyed by all. Though Handel wrote it for Lent, it is most often performed at Christmas.  We usually do not hear the original, more simple, composition, since many composers modified it over time, including Mozart.  Still, the basic composition touches the spirit and the heart in ways that few compositions can.  I hope you will take the time to enjoy this work soon if you never have, or to listen to it again.

Evangelicals & Catholics Together

The late Chuck Colson and the late John Richard Neuhaus were very good friends.  Chuck Colson had been President's Nixon's attorney in the midst of Watergate, and went to prison because of some of his activities.  Around that time, he converted to Christianity (described in his book, Born Again), and later became a leading evangelical through his efforts in Prison Fellowship.

John Richard Neuhaus was a leading Lutheran minister who wrote a prominent book, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (1984). On September 8, 1990, John Richard Neuhaus was received into the Catholic Church, and a year later he was ordained a priest.  His decision threw his friend into perplexion. For a time, I confess, I was vexed over his decision. It took months for me to realize that he was the same man who was a brother to me as a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor. In fact, in some ways I learned to admire him all the more, because he had the courage to do something he believed in deeply, though it might cost him dearly in terms of support and relationships.  http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/januaryweb-only/103-51.0.html?start=2

In an article Colson wrote in 2009, he gave the lion's share of credit to the formation of the project, which became known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together, to Fr. John Richard Neuhaus, who had just passed away. By 1994, they, and other leading Evangelical and Catholic scholars, had not only formed this project, they issued its first statement, Evangelicals & Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium.

This statement built upon some of the earlier discussions between Pope John Paul II and Billy Graham.  The statement emphasized a unity between Catholics and Evangelicls, which, though imperfect, centered upon many essential agreed upon truths - and yet did not deny at the same time (in truth) some important disagreements between Evangelicals and Catholics. Still, it asserted, not all differences are authentic disagreements, nor need all disagreements divide. Differences and disagreements must be tested in disciplined and sustained conversation. Thus began an ongoing series of "disciplined and sustained conversation" that resulted in several statements by the ECT project, which I plan to review in this blog. (I have a Facebook Group dedicated to this purpose, http://www.facebook.com/groups/206783002679350/; If you want to join that Group, let me know.)

On a personal note, this effort is very important to me, because I was raised a Catholic, left that faith tradition in my early teens, and became a born-again Evangelical in my late teens.  I have lately been reconnecting with my Catholicism while retaining my Evangelicalism.  The efforts by Evangelicals and Catholics Together speaks to me on a deeply personal level.

Robert's Reasoning on Obamacare

Chief Justice John Roberts

Many still ask today, How did Chief Justice Roberts (plus 4) find the Obamacare mandate was actually a tax (and not a penalty)? Roberts cities Justices Story and Holmes - if a statute has two different interpretations, the Court must adopt the one that avoids unconstitutionality. He notes that the only consequence of not obeying the mandate is making an additional payment to the IRS when paying taxes. So in effect, the mandate is a tax hike on those not carrying health insurance. Robert says the law is not concerned whether this is a natural reading of the statute, only a "fairly possible" one.  It's a fair possible reading because:

• It looks like a tax because it is only imposed on those who make enough to be required to file taxes.

• The amount to be paid is determined by factors such as taxable income, number of dependents, and joint filing status - basically tax factors.

• The mandate is in the Internal Revenue Code.

• It's enforced by the IRS, which must assess and collect it "in the same manner as taxes."

• It generates revenues for the government.
(These were arguments previously made to say it was a tax when it was considered.) 

Roberts acknowledges Congress labelled this a penalty, and not a tax. He notes the Court has not always followed the label Congress gives an Act. So it did not consider the "Child Labor Tax" to fall with the Taxing Power. He cites a series of Supreme Court cases where Congressional Acts were treated as a tax, though they were variously called a license, a surcharge, and even a penalty. They all used a "functional approach" rather than following the label.

Roberts notes additional factors that indicates a tax, not a penalty:

• By statute, the amount due can never be more than the price of insurance.
• The mandate does not require intent questions like a penalty usually does.
• Though its IRS enforced, it does not allow criminal enforcement like a penalty usually does.
• If someone chooses to pay the penalty rather than comply, they have completely complied with the law, quite unlike a penalty.
  
  (I only summarized part of the full opinion - link below -  from Section III B - starting on page 31.)

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/NEWS/scotus_opinion_on_ACA_from_msnbc.com.pdf