And the award for stupidity goes to....Quentin Tarantino for his comments about John Ford

Quentin Tarantino

It's that time of year again.  The Academy Awards will be held this Sunday.  All the pretty people in show business will get together and congratulate each other, patting themselves on the back -- even though half of them actually want to stab each other in the back.

But it’s all in good fun, and many of the movies are quite good.  (Though not Silver Linings Playbook.  Saw it this week. Completely overrated.)

It must be added that showbiz folk are not the brightest people in the world. 

Yes, I know, this is a little like pointing out that the sun is kind of hot and that snow is usually white.  Nevertheless, there is dumb, and then there is what Academy Award-nominated director Quentin Tarantino said recently about an Irish American legend.

What makes this particularly odd is that Tarantino is typically depicted as one of the smartest movie guys on the planet.  Without question his movies -- from Reservoir Dogs to Inglorious Basterds -- range from interesting to unquestionably brilliant. 

This year, Tarantino’s slave revenge fantasy flick Django Unchained is up for Best Picture and Best Screenplay.  Like all of his films, Django is filled with references to the history of cinema. 
Tarantino’s love and knowledge of cinematic history are vast.

Or so I thought.

Back when Django Unchained was first released Tarantino gave an interview, and the topic turned to the great director John Ford.  Ford was born into an Irish immigrant family and often played up his roots by declaring that his birth name was actually Sean Aloysious O’Feeney.  He also made many films about the Irish, including, of course, The Quiet Man.

But Ford also directed dozens of Westerns including classics such as The Searchers, also starring John Wayne.  In the film, Wayne plays an Indian-hating Civil War veteran out for revenge. 

Ford’s mix of shootouts and ethnic tension, and Wayne’s simmering rage, made The Searchers one of the best American movies of all time.  (In fact, there is a new book about the film out entitled The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend by Glenn Frankel.)

Tarantino, however, seems to believe Ford is a fraud.

“One of my American Western heroes is not John Ford, obviously. To say the least, I hate him,” Tarantino said.

“Forget about faceless Indians he killed like zombies. It really is people like that that kept alive this idea of Anglo-Saxon humanity compared to everybody else's humanity -- and the idea that that's hogwash is a very new idea in relative terms. And you can see it in the cinema in the '30s
and '40s — it's still there. And even in the '50s.”

Where does one begin with Tarantino’s own hogwash?

First of all, let’s begin with Wayne’s character in The Searchers. Yes, he’s a bigot. That’s the point Ford is trying to make!

The Wayne character is so blinded by his rage that he nearly kills his own niece and, in the end, must separate himself from his own family.

Of course, by today’s standards, the Native American characters in 1950s Westerns look a tad insensitive.  But in The Searchers and other Ford flicks, at least the Indian characters speak and are depicted generally as individuals.

Tarantino was also angered by the fact that Ford, in his early Hollywood days, played a hooded member of the Ku Klux Klan in the infamously racist film Birth of a Nation. 

Which is a little like calling Daniel Day-Lewis a racist because his character despised Irish Catholics in Gangs of New York.

But here’s where Tarantino is really wrong.

Ford’s films in general expose the corrupt nature of the powerful and demand justice for the weak.

As movie critic Stephen Whitty notes, “John Ford never forgot his parents had arrived here when help-wanted notices still read No Irish Need Apply...Ford knew injustice, and he hated it.”

That’s why some even see echoes of the Irish Famine in Ford’s adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath.
Ford changed American cinema for the better in countless ways.

So, Quentin Tarantino, next time, just say “Thank you.”

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

9/11 first responder FDNY’s Martin Fullam’s death and the health damage the World Trade attacks cause

First responders carry the lifeless body of Father Michael Judge from the wreckage of the
World Trade Center on 9/11

It is one of the enduring images of 9/11, the lifeless body of Father Mychal Judge carried from the dusty chaos by five men layered in debris.  This was just  before the North Tower collapsed.

Irish American NYPD Lieutenant Bill Cosgrove was among the men carrying Judge.  Cosgrove later credited Judge with posthumously saving his own life because all five of the men carrying Judge in that photo were alive on the morning of September 12, 2001.

That does not, however, mean they survived 9/11. The iconic photo by Reuters shutterbug Shannon Stapleton -- which some have said echoes great Renaissance religious painting -- features a hard-working firefighter on the far left.  His head is bowed, resigned to the grim work of carrying the FDNY’s beloved chaplain. 

He is FDNY Lieutenant Martin Fullam. Late last month, quietly, Fullam died at the age of 56, mourned by his Irish American wife, the former Patricia Kelly, and three daughters, Kelly, Emma and Caroline.

Father Judge was the first official victim of the 9/11 attacks.  Fullam is the latest.

Read more US crime news here

Fullam spent weeks at the pile looking for survivors and then remains.  Several years later he was diagnosed with polymyositis, an autoimmune disease that targets the body's muscle tissues. He was also diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in his lungs. 

“Over the course of several years, the disease weakened his muscles and ravaged his lungs to the point that he could barely perform ordinary tasks,” The Staten Island Advance newspaper reported. 

“He became tired when he walked upstairs or tried to tie his shoes. By 2006, Mr. Fullam was tethered to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day.”

To Fullam’s great credit, despite his ailments, he fought hard for the passage of the Zadroga Act which helps compensate first responders exposed to deadly toxins at Ground Zero.

The years following the 9/11 attacks have seen a slow but steady stream of deadly diagnoses -- cancers, respiratory problems and other ailments linked to service after the attacks.

Osama bin Laden is dead and the Freedom Tower is nearing completion.  And yet, families such as the Fullams and so many others across the five boroughs of New York City still watch as loved ones weaken and die much too young because of diseases contracted following the 9/11 attacks. It is like a nightmare that simply will not end.

Read more: Michael Lynch: Irish American Firefighter, 9/11 victim remembered

Similarly, just when it seems the abuse revelations emanating from the Catholic Church could not get any worse, we are presented with the files released earlier this month by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, once under the leadership of Irish American Roger Mahony.

The 12,000 documents present stark new evidence that church leadership knew about shocking levels of abuse, yet did little to ensure that abusive priests were kept away from children or put in jail.

LA’s current Archbishop Jose Gomez said, "The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children."

The next pope should take those words to heart.

Gomez later stripped Mahony of his official duties, a rare public spat between high church officials. Mahony responded, "Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices or procedures. I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth."

Perhaps by the time Mahony handed the reins off to Gomez in 2011 things had improved. But as the release of these latest files show, terrible things were covered up, ignored or both in Catholic parishes across Los Angeles.

As The New York Times noted, “Over four decades, particularly under Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, parishioners in the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese repeatedly tried to alert church authorities about abusive priests in their midst, trusting that the church would respond appropriately.”

That didn’t happen. The church sex scandals as well as the attacks of 9/11 have scarred a generation and hit Irish Americans particularly hard. 

There is only thing worse than having to endure them in the first place -- the fact that there also seems to be no end in sight to the damage these traumatic events can inflict. 

(Contact Sidewalks at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

The Ed Koch years in the Bronx - 'Cut and Run in the Bronx' by John Liam Shea

Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch

John Liam Shea remembers visiting his Irish-born grandparents’ house in the  heavily-Irish Kingsbridge section of the Bronx.

“It was like entering Ireland,” recalls Shea.  “All the delis and the butcher shops were all Irish.”

But the times they were a’changing.  This was 1970s New York City, and even the stalwart Hibernian residents of Kingsbridge could not ignore the crime and chaos that were becoming a brutal fact of life in New York City.

Shea has plowed memories and stories of New York’s good old/bad old days into a vibrant, darkly comic novel called Cut and Run in the Bronx.  The book is a very interesting (not to mention very funny) read, particularly this past week, with the passing of three-time New York City Mayor Ed Koch. 

Without question, Koch was a dominant figure in 20th century New York City history.  Not only that, he had a strong link to New York’s Irish community, always on the March up Fifth Avenue on March 17, and forging a particularly close bond with Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor.

However, it can’t be ignored that crime spun wildly out of control during the Koch years.  Which is not to say Koch, who ran as a law-and-order candidate, could have snapped his fingers and solved this vexing, tragic problem.

Nevertheless, people like Shea’s grandparents were witnesses to not only a chaotic time but also a dramatic demographic shift.  This was the era of New York’s much-discussed “white flight,” and the New York Irish -- from Kingsbridge in the Bronx to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn -- were a big part of that.

Shea’s own grandmother had thoughts of leaving Kingsbridge for the leafier environs of Riverdale.  But his grandfather would have none of it.

Earlier in the 20th century, it was easy to see the appeal of Irish enclaves such as Kingsbridge. “When they came to this country, it wasn’t that big of a change,” notes Shea, whose novel was put out by the Dublin-based publisher Seven Towers.

“They could get the Irish foods and still have an Irish priest.”

But for many Irish New Yorkers who lived through the Koch years, it was hard to ignore the changes.

Crime was up.  Old friends were moving out to the suburbs.  Many Irish American city employees may have been laid off -- temporarily or permanently -- during the  fiscal crisis of 1975, two years before Koch took office.

Not for nothing does a character in Cut and Run in the Bronx, a veteran cop named Dunphy, view himself as the last of a dying breed, and feel that an era is ending. For many Irish New Yorkers in the 1970s and 1980s, the changes were simply too much.

In the end, especially with the passing of Koch, there is a temptation to look back with fondness and nostalgia. 

This is a little surprising, given that we spent quite a few years looking back at pre-Giuliani New York as something akin to Thunderdome without even Mad Max to maintain control.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.

“There’s mixed feelings,” notes Shea, who will be doing a reading at the Irish Arts Center in New York on March 9.  “You wouldn’t want to go back to the anarchy of that time.”

But he adds, “There’s always that question -- what did you lose?  You look at 42nd Street and it’s just become...a big strip mall, like the rest of America.”

And though many Irish Americans did flee New York in the 1970s and 1980s, many stayed. Some were even charged with the increasingly difficult task of maintaining order. 

Shea, who spent nearly two decades teaching at Rice High School in Harlem before it closed in 2011, talked to many retired police officers who also worked at the school. A lot of their stories, as well as his own affinity for the Big Apple, compelled him to set his book in the Bronx.

“Anytime you write about New York, New York becomes a character in the story,” said Shea, whose father’s family came to New York from Kerry.  His maternal grandparents are from Cork and Clare.

“And, to me, there’s always been something magical about the Bronx.”

Magical?  The Bronx?  Yes.

And also a place offering -- shall we say -- a unique perspective on the Koch years in New York. 

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

A long journey into “night” - the Irish American author Jennings Michael Burch that still strikes a chord today

Jennings Michael Burch

Sometimes, the students are the ones who teach the teachers.

High school students all across New York City spent last week taking their all-important Regents exams is subjects like algebra, global history and English language arts.

As readers of this column may know, I’m a high school teacher in Brooklyn.  And  so my job last week was to grade literally hundreds of those English language  arts Regents exams.

One part of the exam asks students to read a quotation by a famous person and write an essay about two works of literature related to that quote. And so, not surprisingly, I read essay after essay in which students discussed The Catcher in the Rye, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible and many other staples of American literature.

But, this year, one title came up on numerous student essays that I’d never heard of.  The book was called They Cage the Animals at Night and, as the students were describing it, the book was about a boy with a series of family problems who ended up in numerous foster homes, some of which were run by the Catholic Church. 

Some of the nuns the boy came across were nice.  Others were not.

A little bit of research introduced me Jennings Michael Burch, the author of They Cage the Animals at Night.  Burch’s childhood, in many ways, was very typical for Irish Americans at the time. 

He was born in New York City in the late 1940s.  His father was named Francis and his mother was named Rita (nee Hogan).  The family moved around, from Queens to Manhattan to the Bronx. 

Burch himself would go on to become a police officer and raise four daughters of his own. But there were things about his youth that were far from typical.  Overall there were five Burch children, and at some point Rita simply became overwhelmed. Jennings entered the foster care system, eventually staying in over 30 different foster homes. 

Thus began an odyssey that very few children could endure.  Burch faced mental and physical abuse. He was temporarily placed with families that were, at best, uncaring and, at worst, criminal. 

Burch’s book manages to vividly convey not only the ordinary traumas of childhood, but the extraordinary challenges he had to overcome to survive. 

They Cage the Animals at Night has drawn comparisons to the trilogy of books (which students devour) about abuse by Dave Pelzer, as well as Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes.

It was satisfying to learn about Burch, his life and his book. There is something to be said here that is possibly corny, but still noble about the power of reading. 

Jennings Michael Burch created a harrowing story about a time and place that many high school students in the year 2013 might not otherwise care about.  And for all of the difficulties he faced, it was another Irish American family, the Dailys, who were finally able to show Jennings the love and guidance he needed.

Then I learned -- you can’t make this stuff up -- Michael Jackson, of all people, had been planning to make a movie based on They Cage the Animals at Night when the famed singer died in 2009. Jackson said he related to Burch’s story. "Michael told me often he felt like he grew up as an orphan, like a foster kid, because he never was in one home," producer, writer and director Bryan Michael Stoller told Reuters a few years back.

"To him every hotel was like a different foster home. He said he used to sit in the window and see kids playing outside and cry because he couldn't be part of that."

Not many 70-somethings can say they managed to emotionally move Brooklyn 17 year-olds as well as the King of Pop. Then I learned one more important thing.

Jennings Michael Burch died earlier this month at the age of 71. He had been battling cancer for some time. 

There was no obituary in The New York Times.  Just a notice in the Putnam County Courier, published in upstate New York, where Burch called home for the final 20 years of his life.

They Cage the Animals at Night may never come out as a movie.  Burch had been working on a sequel, but it’s not clear if he ever finished it.

One thing is clear.  Many of us worry if we leave a legacy on this planet.  Jennings Michael Burch had no such worries. 

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)

The conspiracy theory that won’t go away - Robert F Kennedy and the secrets behind the assassination of JFK

Robert F. Kennedy Jr

Early in Oliver Stone’s hyper-paranoid film JFK, Guy Bannister (played by Ed Asner) grumbles that he hates the fact that, by 1963, African Americans could  more or less vote safely.  He adds, “[Blacks] get together with the Jews and the  Catholics and elect an Irish bleeding heart.”

According to the film, Bannister -- and a whole bunch of other people -- did  something to stop that “Irish bleeding heart.” 

Bannister and the mob and the CIA and Lyndon Johnson and perhaps even Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

The Warren Commission later argued that Oswald, in fact, acted alone. But most Americans remain skeptical of the Warren Report.

Bobby Kennedy Jr., it turns out, is one of them.  Earlier this month, JFK’s nephew, as well as his niece, Rory, sat down for an interview in Dallas.

Eventually, Bobby Kennedy’s two children were asked about the conspiracy theories swirling around JFK’s murder. “The evidence at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman,” RFK Jr. said, though he didn’t elaborate much beyond that. 

He did add that his father, who himself was assassinated in June of 1968, also believed their was another killer aside from Oswald. According to RFK Jr., his father considered the Warren Commission report “shoddy.”

RFK Jr. added, “He publicly supported the Warren Commission report but  privately he was dismissive of it."

RFK Jr. also suggested that the most likely co-conspirators were mafia leaders who were targeted by JFK’s attorney general -- who was none other than Bobby Kennedy Sr.

To quote another famous mafia figure, “Every time I think I’m out...they pull me  back in!”

Things have been quiet on the JFK conspiracy front.  And then, RFK Jr. went and made his comments. 

And then, a few days later, an apartment in Dallas which Oswald called home in 1962 and 1963 was torn down, briefly resurrecting interest in Oswald’s bizarre life prior to being thrust onto the world stage.

And so we have, arguably, the most compelling defender yet of a conspiracy  theory to kill JFK -- his own martyred brother and his crusading son. 

It means nothing to me.  For years I waded into the muck and mire of the JFK conspiracy underworld and emerged unconvinced. 

Yes, there is a lot of evidence to suggest others were involved in the Kennedy killing.  Yes, the Warren report is flawed. 

But I also discovered that most people who buy into the JFK conspiracy do so not only based on facts, but also on something that can only be described as vaguely  religious.

You also see this from those who buy into conspiracies surrounding another  tragedy which hit Irish America hard -- the 9/11 attacks.  Part of the allure of  conspiracy theories surrounding both 9/11 and JFK is that they explain the seemingly unexplainable.  

How could one Marxist loser end Camelot?  How could 20 fanatics with a few hours of flying lessons murder 3,000 people? No, it must have been something larger.

But have you ever noticed that people don’t talk much about conspiracy theories when it comes to plots that more or less failed?

In December of 1960, a man named Richard Pavlick packed his car with dynamite and was going to ram the vehicle into a Kennedy home in Florida.  He chickened out and was arrested. 

Had he succeeded, perhaps great energy would have gone into uncovering a broader conspiracy. Instead, the truth was fairly easy to swallow.  The guy was an anti-Catholic nut who hated JFK.

And why so few conspiracy theories about the 1993 effort to topple the World Trade Center?  Why do theories about rogue government elements, and, yes, even Israel and the Jews, flourish only around the 2001 attack that actually brought the towers down?

It is generally futile to go detail for detail with conspiracy theorists.  They are dogged in their shaping of facts which support their view, and, like the  religiously faithful, defend their organization of those facts. 

As for me, once I read Gerald Posner’s book Case Closed, I was able to accept the fact that Oswald acted alone.

The odd thing in all of this is why RFK Jr. was not asked if he believes Sirhan Sirhan acted alone when he killed Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles in 1968?  Why not ask that question?

Must be a conspiracy.

(Contact Sidewalks at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

'Gangster Squad', Whitey Bulger, the Westies and more - It’s prime time for Irish crime - VIDEO

Josh Brolin stars as John O'Mara in 'Gangster Squad'

Gangster Squad is currently filling movie theaters across the nation with the rat-tat-tat sound of Tommy guns firing off endless rounds.  The film stars Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, as well as Josh Brolin, who plays an Irish American cop named John O’Mara.

But as several recent crime cases indicate, Irish Americans are still very much  on the wrong side of the law as well.

The case against Irish Godfather Whitey Bulger, for example, drags on.  The  senior citizen mobster, this week, argued that he could not get a fair trial with the current judge presiding over the case. 

Bulger -- who himself is  expected to be the subject of a forthcoming Hollywood flick directed by newly minted Golden Globe winner Ben Affleck -- is arguing that the judge’s prior experience  prosecuting Boston criminals creates the appearance of a conflict.

God knows how you could find anyone in Boston law enforcement who did not, at one point, have some sort of involvement in the massive, decades-long hunt to nab Bulger.  One gets the feeling that Bulger will be sentenced to a  hole six-feet in the ground well before he is ever officially sentenced to a  prison cell.

Meanwhile, late last year, federal law enforcement officials announced the arrest of an Irish American member of the Westies street gang, accused of extortion in a case that also involved a shootout. 

Read more: Irish American mob lawyer Gerald McMahon targets “rats” as he calls informers

New Jersey resident Daniel Hanley -- identified by the feds as a member of the long-standing West Side Irish  gang the Westies -- has been accused of teaming up with members of the Gambino crime family and an offshoot of the Hell’s Angel motorcycle gang to run a violent loan sharking operation.

“With alleged involvement of the Gambinos, Westies and Hell’s Angels, this case hit the trifecta of loan sharking and extortion,” New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly commented.

But by the far the most intriguing Irish American criminal in the news these  days is Anthony “Tony O” O’Donnell. 

O’Donnell has been identified as a long-time associate of the Gambino crime family and has faced a slew of charges  related to various shakedowns in the construction industry.

Back in 2000, O’Donnell, as well as Finbar O’Neill and other Irish Americans, were named in an indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau following a three year investigation.

Meanwhile, at a January 2011 press conference, Justice Department officials  outlined O’Donnell’s long career in the New York-New Jersey underworld.

O’Donnell “served as the right hand man to Edward Garafola, a Gambino soldier  who was a member of the Gambino family’s ‘construction panel,’” a Justice  Department report noted, before outlining a host of complex shakedown schemes the Gambino expert “panel” oversaw.

In 1993, O’Donnell was arrested and charged with participating in the armed robbery of a UPS truck moving goods from New York to New Jersey.  In 2008, he also plead guilty to what the Justice Department termed “extortion conspiracy.”

Read more: Like Big Tobacco, the Big Guns of the NRA are about to fade

In his latest round of legal woes, O’Donnell has been accused of shaking down a Midtown Manhattan real estate investment firm.  In an effort to polish his image before sentencing, O’Donnell submitted chummy letters from political heavyweights including New York Senator Chuck Schumer, former president Bill Clinton and even current one Barack Obama.

Trouble is, the correspondence between these bold-faced politicos and O’Donnell was hardly personal.  Many of the documents were form letters sent out in mass mailings to constituents, supporters, donors or others.

Either way, O’Donnell’s shakedown shenanigans, Whitey Bulger’s stall tactics and the return of the old-school Westies goes to show that America’s real-life “Gangster Squad” still had a decidedly green tint -- for better or worse. 

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

What now for the Catholic Church? Obama’s reelection and schools among questions that need to be answered

Cardinal Timothy Dolan

When the Academy Award nominations are announced on January 10, Mea Maxima Culpa may or may not be one of the five films up for Best Documentary.

The film, about the sexual abuse horrors Wisconsin’s Reverend Lawrence Murphy is accused of, was on a shortlist of 15 top documentaries back in December.

Either way, the film directed by Alex Gibney has already made a troubling case not only against Murphy, but the Vatican as well.

With the New Year upon us, and a grueling election which grappled with tough religious questions behind us, it is probably time to ask -- what is the future of the Catholic Church in America?

Given the revelations in Mea Maxima Culpa, given the election results and the ongoing restructuring of Catholic schools across the U.S., it is surprising fewer people have not raised this question.

After President Obama’s reelection, for example, most commentators argued that it was time for the Republican Party to take a long look in the mirror.

But what about the church and the election? New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan was on the offensive much of the electoral season, denouncing the Obama administration on several fronts.

Read more: New York Times surprised over Cardinal Dolan's support for beatification of Dorothy Day

Irish Catholic pundits such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, meanwhile, suggested the election was nothing short of a referendum on religious freedom.  A vote for Obama, many argued, was a vote against the Catholic Church.

Yet according to most polling data, Catholics supported Obama by a slim majority. (Though it appears that Irish and other white Catholics supported Mitt Romney.)

Either way, given the lengths vocal church leaders went to steer Catholics away from Obama -- Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria likened the Obama administration to those who mocked Jesus -- these numbers do not bode well.

And while it is tempting to say the church is engaged in spiritual rather than political matters, to pretend the church is an apolitical institution is to simply ignore reality.

But politics is only part of what church leaders need to be thinking about.

The true cost of the damage inflicted by the sex abuse scandal.  The purpose -- and  price -- of Catholic education. The dwindling number of priests.

The future of the church hinges on these and other messy, weighty questions.

Irish American scholar Patrick J. McCloskey offered some interesting thoughts this Monday in The New York Times. “Catholic parochial education is in crisis,” McCloskey, and his co-author Joseph Claude Harris, declared in an op-ed piece entitled “Catholic Education, In Need of Salvation.”

They note that Catholic schools have long played a key role for the Irish and other immigrants in America, but are no longer playing that role.

One reason?  Tuition has risen sharply, though not because church revenues have fallen off.

“Despite the sex-abuse scandals and two recessions, church revenue...grew to $11.9 billion in 2010, an inflation-adjusted increase of $2.2 billion from a  decade earlier,” they write.

“Yet educational subsidies have fallen; the church now pays at least 12.6 percent of parochial elementary school costs, down from  63 percent in 1965.”

One possible solution?  Given the falling numbers of priests, McCloskey suggests deacons be given more power.  This, however, would in all likelihood eventually  lead to a “married priesthood.”

“Celibacy should be a sacrifice offered freely, not an excuse for institutional  suicide,” McCloskey writes.

Good luck convincing Pope Benedict -- or, for that matter, Sean Hannity -- of that. But it’s pretty clear something has got to give.

Read more: Cardinal Dolan congratulates Bishop Dennis Sullivan on appointment as bishop of Camden

Something spiritual, yes, but also financial, educational and cultural.  It’s tempting to say it’s time for another Vatican Council, like those meetings held between 1962 and 1965, to take up these profound questions.

Rather than sit and wait for that, perhaps the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops need to confront this moment head on and hold some sort of council of their own. 

If for no other reason, then to shed light on the many good things the church still does. For all of its flaws, we would be a poorer nation without a vibrant, relevant Catholic Church. 

Right now, that does not seem to be what the future holds.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)