The shocking views Orson Welles had about the Irish

Orson Welles. Source: Google Images

There was a kerfuffle recently in the race to become the next governor of Virginia.  Apparently Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe – always proud of his Irish roots -- made a joke about how he’d use the persuasive power of drink to prod folks who might disagree with him.

Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli accused McAuliffe of dabbling in stereotypes.

“Terry McAuliffe insults Irish Americans,” Cuccinelli campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said via Twitter.

You could argue people are being a bit sensitive when it comes to all this.  Because if you really want to hear some nasty things about the Irish, you should book a lunch with legendary filmmaker Orson Welles.

Welles, of course, is dead.  But a new book, My Lunches with Orson, by Henry Jaglom, based on taped conversations, presents Welles’ views on anything and everything.

And boy, did this talented gasbag have a lot to say about the Irish.

Considering that Ireland played a central role in young Orson’s formation, perhaps it would have been better if the Citizen Kane director and famed shill for Paul Masson wine had just politely said, “Thank you.”

Famed actor Spencer Tracy? Welles dismissed him as “one of those bitchy Irishmen.”

Another time Welles added, “Look, I love Ireland, I love Irish literature, I love everything they do.  But the Irish Americans have invented an imitation Ireland which is unspeakable. The wearin’ o’ the green. Oh my God! To vomit!”

Irish Americans, he said, were “a new and terrible race.”

And if there are Irish-born folks out there feeling all superior to Irish Americans, well, Welles had some nasty things to say about you too.
His sociological take on Ireland amounted to an impoverished land in which the women were sexually frustrated and the men simply liked to slug it out.

“It was a culture,” said Welles, “where nobody got married until they were 35 because they were always dreaming of emigrating, and they didn’t want to be stuck with the kids, financially. So all these poor virgin ladies sat around waiting to get married, and the guys are all swinging at each other, reverting to the bestiality of the male.”

And guess who was always there to entertain these frustrated Irish lasses?  You guessed it, suave old Orson.

“I could hardly draw a breath when I visited the Aran Islands,” Welles said. “And these great, marvelous girls in their white petticoats, they’d grab me. Off the petticoats would go. It was as close to male rape as you could imagine.”

Welles even claimed that the women then ran to their local priests to confess.

“I had another confession this morning. When are you leaving?” an exasperated priest once supposedly said to Welles.  “He was protecting the virtue of his flock,” Welles added.

Overall, centuries of colonialism and repression left the Irish with a “passive meanness and cunning,” said Welles.

How did Welles come to, uh, learn so much about Ireland?

He was actually taken there at the ripe old age of 16, with his mind set on becoming a painter.  Never lacking confidence, Welles liked to say he swiftly duped the directors of Dublin’s Gate Theatre into believing he was actually a seasoned American actor.

Welles is also said to have later wooed Wicklow-born Hollywood star Geraldine Fitzgerald, and even fathered her child, Michael Lindsay-Hogg.

One of Welles’ biographers even thinks that Ireland was so important to Welles that he proposed making it the inspiration for Citizen Kane, if a movie were ever to be made about Welles’ life.

“On the wild west coast of Ireland, (Welles) meets a glorious Irish girl -- his first true love,” David Thomson once wrote. “He is tempted to stay there, and she is likely pregnant. But she urges him to continue with his travels -- be all he can be. If there is a child, she says, she will name it Rosebud, after his pretty mouth.”

Thomson further describes the imaginary movie, “(T)he Irish love affair should hang over the whole thing -- along with the notion that he may have left a child there. I think there could even be a return to Ireland, in an attempt to find them -- but the girl has vanished, and thus the sense of loss inspires him in coming towards Citizen Kane and its theme of lost childhood.”

All I can say, Orson, is: “You’re welcome.”

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Writing about the contemporary Catholic Church the right way

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin. Source: Politicsdaily.com

J.F. Powers is often referred to -- if anyone still refers to him, that is -- as a “Catholic writer.”

This is understandable.  His short stories, as well as his highly-praised novels Wheat that Springeth Green (1988) and Morte D’Urban (which won 1963’s National Book Award, are about priests as well as the rewards and challenges of a spiritual life.

But there is much more to Powers’ Catholicism than his meticulous descriptions of parish life in the Midwest.

Powers, whose grandfather came to the U.S. from Waterford, refused to serve in the American military during World War II and spent over a year in prison.

Powers had been drawn to a strain of pacifist Catholicism known as “Detachment.”  He “approved of...its criticism of American materialism and militarism, and its rebuke to complacent middle-class Catholics, who, for all their manifest religiosity, put ‘business sense’ first,” writes Katherine A. Powers (J.F.’s daughter) in a new book called Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J.F. Powers, 1942-1963.

I thought of Powers when I read that Irish Archbishop Diarmuid Martin leveled some criticism at Catholic writers last weekend at a conference in Kilkenny.

Martin was more concerned with what he called the "growing tendency" towards “tabloidism” in sectors of the Catholic media.

Still, such criticism does raise broader, important questions about what -- if anything -- it means to be a Catholic writer in the 21st century.

Lord knows it’s a good time if you love reading writers who explore Catholic life.  The great Alice McDermott has a new novel out entitled Someone. From Colum McCann and Colm Toibin to Junot Diaz, there are some great Catholic reads out there.

But such a diverse array of writers makes it tempting to say that there really is no point identifying what it is that makes a writer Catholic, since their styles and attitudes vary so widely.

But that’s a bit of a cop out.  To be raised Catholic and write about Catholicism means you are standing up and saying something about the church.  And it need not always be positive.

Nor, however, should a Catholic writer be relentlessly negative, a tempting apple most of us have sampled from time to time.

Consider the great Chicago Irish American writer James T. Farrell.  He is arguably the greatest chronicler of pre-World War II Irish America, particularly in his mammoth Studs Lonigan trilogy.

Too often, however, Farrell (who renounced his own faith) depicts the world of Catholicism as so oppressive and grim that it sometimes undermines his powerful observations.

The best Catholic writers understand that the church and its people and traditions should be explored with subtlety and mystery.

Are there times and issues that demand sharp criticism?  Of course.

As the editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper Michael Kelly told the Irish Independent, "I think many church leaders struggle to understand the role of an independent Catholic press –- loyal to the church while unafraid to point out and highlight what is wrong."

I would add that -- even in the wake of the sex abuse horrors and the insistence that women remain second class citizens within the church hierarchy -- the Catholic Church can remain inspiring for independent-minded writers in the 21st century.

First and foremost, though often offered up as a pillar of conformity, the church, in many ways, remains a countercultural institution.

Let’s return to J.F. Powers.  You may not agree with his pacifism -- in fact, mainstream church leaders didn’t.  Nevertheless, the strength of his convictions is admirable.

More broadly, then and now, it is hard to find voices in America arguing that in the rush to collect material goodies, something deep and profound is lost.  As breathtaking narcissism becomes increasingly normal, how many institutions remain deeply committed to others, to uplifting the down and out?
The church’s own leaders often make it difficult to concentrate on this aspect of the church’s mission.

Perhaps it’s up to the writers to spread the word.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

New York’s big time mayor the always interesting Michael O’Dwyer

The last Irish-born mayor of New York William O'Dwyer

A bunch of people just ran to become New York City’s next mayor.  And you’d need to put all of these decent but bland folks together to come up with a figure as compelling and complex as William O’Dwyer, New York’s last Irish-born mayor who served from 1946-1950.

O’Dwyer -- and all of his inspiring achievements and shady connections -- serves as the inspiration for the character Charlie O’Kane in Kevin Baker’s big, new historical novel The Big Crowd.

Dubbed the literary world’s “sharpest chronicler of New York’s past” by Rolling Stone, this is Baker’s latest exploration of how the Irish have used ambition, politics, religion and occasionally murder to make a permanent mark on New York City.

“O’Dwyer’s story was fascinating to me,” said Baker, seated (appropriately) in the Dead Rabbit, a downtown Manhattan bar heavily inspired by 19th century Irish pubs.

The pub has the kind of look (albeit shiny and scrubbed) familiar to any of the Irish immigrants in Baker’s brilliant 2002 novel Paradise Alley, which features wrenching scenes aboard a Famine-era coffin ship, and which culminates in the New York City Draft Riots.

In The Big Crowd Baker fast forwards nearly a century, to explore how a poor boy from Mayo and his devoted brother reached the height of political power in post-World War II New York, only to see their lives unravel because of romantic entanglements and possible connections to one of New York’s great unsolved crimes.

“O’Dwyer always seemed to be like something Tammany Hall created,” adds Baker with a laugh. 
Who could resist a political run by a poor kid who grew up in a big Mayo family, came to the U.S. at the age of 20, put himself through Fordham and later served honorably in the Army during World War II, rising to the rank of brigadier general?

The famed Irish-dominated political machine Tammany Hall was still riding high in the forties when O’Dwyer first ran for mayor in 1941, losing to the legendary Fiorello LaGuardia.

Also that year (right around Election Day, in fact), a man was found dead outside of the Half-Moon Hotel in Coney Island.  The dead man turned out to be famed Murder Inc. hitman Abe Reles.

Reles managed to fall -- or be pushed -- out the hotel window despite the presence of police officers charged with protecting the onetime hitman, who’d turned snitch and was helping prosecutors jail other reputed members of Murder Inc.

Through the character Charlie O’Kane (whose devoted brother Tommy is loosely based on O’Dwyer’s fiery politician/activist brother Paul), Baker explores O’Dwyer’s possible ties to the Reles killing and broader police corruption scandals, which ultimately compelled O’Dwyer to resign (though he cited health reasons), following his reelection in 1950.

In the end, The Big Crowd is reminiscent of Peter Quinn’s excellent detective story The Man Who Never Returned.  Whereas Quinn laid out a theory for the long-unsolved disappearance of Judge Crater, Baker sets out a theory for Reles’ death.

Along the way, Baker takes us on a vivid tour of New York’s Irish underbelly, particularly the docks made famous in the film classic On the Waterfront. 

Baker’s cast of characters includes colorful figures such as “King” Joe Ryan, president of the longshoreman’s union, waterfront enforcer William McCormack, Murder Inc. hitman Lepke Buchalter and “American Pope” Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman.

For all of its ties to reality, Baker stresses that while the O’Kane brothers are similar to the O’Dwyers, he’s also added his own twists.

“In the end, this is fiction,” says Baker, born in New Jersey and raised in Massachusetts, whose own family tree includes Murphys from the Bronx.

Ultimately, Baker came away from his extensive research admiring O’Dwyer’s accomplishments, but also feeling he’d become too lax when it came to corruption as well as the broader management of the city.

What is clear is that they don’t make mayoral candidates like William O’Dwyer any more.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan0@gmail.com)

Digging Seamus Heaney in my Brooklyn classroom and around the world

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney died in a Dublin hospital last week at the age of 74, but he will live on for generations in thousands of classrooms, including my own.  I have been teaching Heaney’s poetry to inner city kids from Brooklyn for 10 years now.

True, there are a lot of rural and religious images in Heaney’s poetry that might not be accessible or interesting to 21st century teens in general and Brooklyn kids in particular.

Nevertheless, the Heaney poem “Digging” has played a central role in my teaching.  It is a poem I usually teach the first week of classes.

It is simple and mysterious.  Quiet, and yet a call to arms.  It has some unfamiliar vocabulary words to challenge the students, and employs many of the literary elements (simile, metaphor, repetition) which (unfortunately) have been drained of all their beauty by the bureaucrats who write state examinations.

Ultimately, one of the many messages in “Digging” is a message so important to teenagers. It can be summed up by what were reportedly Heaney’s final words: “Do not be afraid.”

Now, “Digging” is not a perfect poem to teach.  As with many Heaney poems, it begins with agricultural imagery, in this case, the poet’s father digging for potatoes.  Brooklyn kids don’t do much farming these days.

Plus, in the poem’s fifth line, Heaney uses the word “rump,” which inevitably produces giggles from a teenaged crowd.  Heck, even the word “spade” (the shovel used by Heaney’s father) can create problems because it has been used as a racial insult in the past.

But those problems are all beside the point once we take apart the second line, in which Heaney declares that his pen fits in his hand as “snug as a gun.”

Why would he compare a pen to a gun?  Is it possible those things can be similar in any way?

This poem has become so important in my classroom because answering these questions leads to much more fundamental questions. Why do we even bother to teach writing? Why do students need to improve their writing?
In short: Why write?

If you think these are silly questions with self-evident answers, well, you’ve never been in a classroom with resistant students, teenagers whose writing skills haven’t developed much past 4th or 5th grade levels.

They don’t enjoy doing something they can’t do well.  Who does?

It’s my job to not only teach them how to write well, but -- more importantly -- to teach them why it is important to write well.

It’s a job made easier by Seamus Heaney’s “Digging.”  The poem’s speaker observes his father “Stooping in rhythm through potato drills / Where he was digging.”

He later adds, “By God, the old man could handle a spade/Just like his old man.”
So, how does the speaker in the poem feel about his father?  And who is this other “old man?”

Suddenly, this is a multi-generational poem.  Is it important to think about the generations that came before us?  Why?  What do you know about the generations that came before you?

It is around here where students begin making their own connections, how exploring your own family history is a from of “digging.”

I’ll never forget the first time a student’s eyes lit up and noted how the word “roots” matches this poem so perfectly, even before the poem’s speaker mentions “the curt cuts of an edge /Through living roots awaken in my head.”

Then the poem takes its final, radical turn.

“I’ve no spade to follow men like them/Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests/I’ll dig with it.”

Should children do what their parents do?  Why or why not?  And how do you “dig” with a pen anyway?  What can you unearth?

A secret.  A better job.  A lover.  Anything and everything.  Good and bad.
Because a pen is not only like a shovel, but, don’t forget, it is also like a gun.  And there are usually skeptical comments here, because these kids come from tough neighborhoods, and they’ll wonder what this farm boy in the poem knows about guns.

And then I may tell them a little bit about Irish history.  And then they’ll write a little about their own history.

The first day of school in New York City is September 9.  We will continue digging. We will not be afraid.

More to 1963 then John F Kennedy, the Irish Catholic’s USA experience

President John F. Kennedy.

By one count, nearly 50 books about President John F. Kennedy are slated for release this fall, when the 50th anniversary of the first Catholic president’s assassination is upon us.

But for the Irish in America, there is a whole lot more to 1963 then November 22 in Dallas, as traumatic as that event was.

A few weeks back, I finally caught a movie I’d been meaning to watch called The Cardinal.  It was released in 1963 and chronicles the life of an Irish immigrant’s son in Boston, who goes on to become -- you guessed it -- a cardinal.

The movie has some familiar names in it.  Burgess Merideth plays an ailing priest while John Huston steals the show as a wily cardinal.

The film was directed by the great Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder) and featured tragic New York-born Irish American Maggie McNamara (once an Academy Award Best Actress nominee) in her last role. She committed suicide at the age of 49.

The Cardinal earned numerous Academy Award nods and won the Golden Globe for Best Drama.  The three-hour film tackles immigration, assimilation, the Jim Crow south and the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Given this historical sweep, you might think The Cardinal is a near-classic.  But if you’ve long known about this film you’re a more dedicated movie lover than me, because it took a long time before I’d ever heard of it.

The movie is far from perfect.  To say that star Tom Tryon, as ambitious priest Stephen Fermoyle, is wooden would probably be an insult to trees.

But The Cardinal reveals important things about the Catholic experience in America.  In some ways it is the perfect movie for the Kennedy era -- it illustrates how far Irish Catholics had come, as well as problems that would haunt them into the 21st century.

The film confronts abortion in a way that seems striking in 2013, much less 1963.  Fermoyle’s sister (spoiler alert!) becomes pregnant around the time of World War I but there are health complications.  As the family priest, Fermoyle is the one tasked with making a choice that will haunt him forever.
The film also confronts the question of religious diversity, since Fermoyle’s sister wants to marry a Jewish man who very capably debates the priest on theological questions.

The Jim Crow plotline ranges from stereotypical to ridiculous, though to Fermoyle’s credit he forces indifferent southern church leaders to confront the sin of racism before their eyes.

But as one southern Catholic puts it, “We’re a minority down here, too.”  It’s not a great comparison, but it is true that reactionary forces in the U.S. still viewed the church as foreign and threatening.

Were The Cardinal truly bold it would have looked to northern parishes, where there was also plenty of racism, as 1960s and 1970s clashes in Chicago, Boston and elsewhere would show.

Ultimately, The Cardinal is about Irish Catholic triumph in America, but simmering underneath the film are burning questions about the high price paid for that triumph.  The Kennedy family would know a little bit about that, wouldn’t they?

Meanwhile, one reason it took so long for Catholics to assimilate in America was the feeling that they could never leave the bosom of the parish, that they would always be intellectually narrow.

But in 1963, author J.F. Powers won the National Book Award for his novel Morte D’Urban.  (A book about priests, no less!)  Powers, who lived in Ireland for years and is the subject of a new book edited by his daughter called Suitable Accommodations, had already made a name for himself with his short stories.  As Paul Elie recently wrote in Harper’s, “For Catholics, having Powers in The New Yorker was like having Kennedy in The White House.  He had gained entry into the sophisticated world the magazine represented.”

Other Catholics such as Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy and Katherine Anne Porter received literary awards around 1963, prompting O’Connor herself to say, “(T)his should be some kind of answer to the people who are saying we don’t contribute to the arts.”

When November 22 rolls around, by all means, read some of the JFK books.

But then watch The Cardinal or read some J.F. Powers.  They, too, are central to understanding the Irish Catholic experience in America.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Irish Catholic Chris Christie's big problem is the Republican Party

Chris Christie

Earlier this summer, Baltimore governor and possible 2016 presidential candidate Martin O’Malley played a concert with his Celtic Rock band O’Malley’s March.  At the show, held in Germantown, Maryland, the Irish American O’Malley discussed a recent trip to Ireland.

But then O’Malley went all New Jersey on the crowd.  That’s when things got interesting.
One of the songs O’Malley performed that night was an angry, Celtic-infused Bruce Springsteen song called “Death to My Hometown.”

After performing the tune, O’Malley said that he hopes Springsteen “doesn’t fall into that Chris Christie crap.”

The New Jersey governor, of course, is a huge (if you will) Springsteen fan.  This even though Christie is a Republican and Springsteen has made no secret of his disdain for the right side of the political spectrum.

Christie and Springsteen, nevertheless, have been cordial in public.  Perhaps they will eventually become close pals -- or mortal enemies.  Who knows?

What I do know is that if Christie really does have his eyes on the White House, if he wants to become America’s second Roman Catholic president with Irish roots, he’s got a very big problem.  And it is not his weight.

Chris Christie’s big problem is his own Republican Party.

Christie never misses a chance to announce that he is the “son of an Irish father and a Sicilian mother.”  That is usually a punchline used to explain his famously fierce temper.

That temper was on display earlier this month when Christie got into a war of words with Republican Senator Rand Paul.

Paul is one of those Republicans who is so opposed to taxes and federal spending that he voted against relief for Hurricane Sandy victims.

Which is all well and good if you believe all such spending is bad.  But there’s a dirty little secret about Republicans like this, and Christie exposed it.

"I find it interesting that Senator Paul is accusing us of having a gimme, gimme, gimme attitude toward federal spending when in fact New Jersey is a donor state.  We get 61 cents back on every dollar we send to Washington. And interestingly Kentucky gets $1.51 on every dollar they sent to Washington,” he said.

“So if Senator Paul wants to start looking at where he's going to start to cut spending ... maybe he should start cutting the pork barrel spending that he brings home to Kentucky."

And that pretty much says it all.  States like Kentucky, Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi and Alaska all receive a whole lot more in services than they pay in tax dollars.

You might think this would make these states vote heavily for Democratic Party, which is, of course, the tax and spend party.

But no.  All those states voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2004.

These states are loaded with voters who love to bash Washington, even as they enjoy services -- from food stamps to military bases -- paid for by tax dollars provided by “donor states” such as New York and New Jersey.

It is fitting, then, that in this upside-world, the darling of the anti-Washington, anti-tax crowd, Sarah Palin, declared that she supported Paul in his fight Chris Christie.  Palin is the former governor of Alaska, whose heavily Republican voters also receive way more in services than they pay in taxes.

These would be the voters Christie would have to win over in a Republican primary.  They are rabidly opposed to taxing and spending, though apparently not accepting the services that such taxing and spending pays for.

They are also stridently opposed to abortion, gay marriage and gun restrictions of any kind.  Christie has tried to toe the Republican line on these issues, but he doesn’t come off as a true believer the way the Palins and Pauls of the Republican Party do.

That’s a compliment, by the way.

I have a lot of problems with Christie.  But I welcome the debate he has initiated within the Republican Party.

The only trouble is that it’s a debate he is going to lose.  Badly.

Until Republican voters acknowledge that they are hypocrites when it comes to taxing and spending they will continue to live in blissful ignorance, voting for radically anti-government candidates, even as they live a life significantly funded by the government they claim to hate so much.

Contact Sidewalks at http://tdeignan.blogspot.com/

Catholic parishioners revolt against sexual predators but will it kill the Church?

Archbishop John J Myers

Daniel O’Toole had enough.

O’Toole, and other parishioners at St. Joseph’s Church in Oradell, New Jersey, part of the Archdiocese of Newark, have spent the past week up in arms.  They have been handing out leaflets before and after Mass. 

And on Wednesday, July 31, St. Joseph’s pastor, Reverend Thomas Iwanowski, will step down, following what Iwanowski has described as a series of disagreements over his leadership style.

However, O’Toole told the Bergen Record that there is just one reason it became necessary for Iwanowski to step down.

“The reason he was removed, as best as I can understand it, was because he was harboring a priest with a known history for sexual predation,” O’Toole said.

And so it goes.

Even prior to this latest allegation, their had been calls for the resignation of Newark Archbishop John J. Myers.  Earlier this month, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan also came under fire, accused of shielding church finances even as known abusers remained in the priesthood for years.

And so, it seems as if parishioners have realized that they must take action into their own hands.  This has been part of a quiet revolution across the Catholic Church, especially since the extent of abuse allegations has become painfully clear in the past decade.

Or painfully clear to the people in the pews, anyway.

Parish and diocesan officials, on the other hand, have proven time and time again that they still don’t grasp the depth and seriousness of the sexual abuse crisis plaguing the Catholic Church.  It has left thousands of sex abuse victims scarred for life.  It has sickened parishioners to such a great extent that many have abandoned the church completely. 

This crisis has also, it should be noted, taken attention away from the charitable works the church still admirably performs, and the many dedicated priests who are a source of comfort to their parishioners.

The latest bit of abhorrent news on this front came from the leafy, north Jersey borough of Oradell.
Attorney Daniel O’Toole is among the more active parishioners at St. Joseph’s, even funding scholarships for local students. 

But late last year, parishioners noticed a new priest who was spending nights in the St. Joseph’s rectory.  It turned out to have been Reverend Robert Chabak, whose home in Toms River, New Jersey, had been damaged by Superstorm Sandy.


It also turns out that in 2004, Chabak had been removed from the ministry, when church officials discovered that there was evidence that Chabak had molested a teenaged boy decades earlier. A second allegation has also since come to light, according to the Star Ledger newspaper.

Despite this, the Newark Archdiocese approved of Chabak staying at the St. Joseph’s rectory, which is located right near St. Joseph’s grammar school.

Iwanowski has said offering shelter to Chabak was an act of compassion and that the archdiocese approved the move solely because Chabak was instructed to do no priestly work whatsoever. 

Furthermore, they note that once allegations about Chabak’s sordid past came to light, he was promptly relocated.

Nevertheless, Chabak was spotted once again at St. Joseph’s. 

This is also the same archdiocese that has been under fire over its handling of another priest, Reverend Michael J. Fugee, who had been accused of touching a 13-year-old while at another Jersey church. 

And yet, earlier this year, Fugee still managed to attend youth retreats and interact with children, in a case that led to the demotion of the Newark Archdiocese’s vicar general John Doran, and spurred calls for Archbishop Meyers’ resignation.

Once again, this week, parishioners had to hear about how Newark Archdiocese officials approved the placement of a priest with a dark past in a local parish.  Church higher-ups better listen to the calls for change coming from the pews. 

If they continue to ignore them, sure, those calls for change might eventually go away.

But that’s only because the pews will be empty.

(Contact Sidewalks at tdeignan.blogspot.com)