Proof That the Mirror of Justice Actually Has Readers! And Shared Thoughts About Diversity and Liberation in Our Catholic Church

I’m posting below an interesting, encouraging, and just downright amusing and uplifting message from our friend, David Gregory, at St. John’s University law school in Queens. This message also reports the wide readership of our Mirror of Justice blog.

Let me provide a little background for readers to set the stage for his message to me, which I’m posting with his permission. About a month ago, in the course of a posting on responses to the situation in Darfur, which emphasized the faithful and loving actions of those in the Catholic Worker movement, I included the following side comment:

[Side Note: Perhaps to the bemused surprise of my friends on the Mirror of Justice and elsewhere in the Catholic academic community, where my deserved reputation is rather conservative, I have to say that these Catholic Worker folks are growing on me. Not only have I found myself writing now on this blog for a second time about their efforts to promote human rights in the Sudan, but others have reported on this blog about the group that followed up the John Paul II conference at St. John’s last month by attending an anti-war poetry reading at the Catholic Worker house. While no one has yet “outed” me, I’ll go ahead and admit here that, yes, I was one of that small band that was shepherded by David Gregory from Queens to the East Village to spend a Friday night with the Catholic Workers. No, I’m not ready to join up, but I am pleased to find common ground on many things. And for us as Catholic legal thinkers to be a contradiction to our society, refusing to adhere to general ideological categories and reaching across arbitrary lines to each other, is an essential part of our mission here at the Mirror of Justice.]

And now here are excerpts from David Gregory's message:

"Yesterday morning, at the Communion Breakfast following the First Friday Catholic Lawyers Guild Mass, Archdiocese of NY (at Our Savior Church, Msgr. George Rutler, Park Ave and East 38th Street; Msgr. GR writes for Crisis magazine, and hosted Pres. Bush for Mass during the GOP 2004 convention here in NYC), several fellow attendees told me that you both had very nice compliments for our evening at the Catholic Worker on March 24, at the close of the JP!! Conference.

I am not a blogger, and, for all practical purposes, do not use the Internet (I admit to the undeniable efficiency of email, however; witness this letter, for example!).

I have never read your Mirror of Justice blog, or virtually any other yet, for that matter.

But, anyhow, that is where the good news was reportedly read.

On behalf of St. John's, thanks for whatever the kind words were/are/will be…..

Some reportees were bemused by Greg's apparent GOP confessional.

Greg, if it is some small comfort to you……

All are always welcome at the Worker, and, any time that you and yours are in town, you are always most welcome.

My father was a non-Christian Cherokee animist, for all practical purposes, in his own faith tradition. Impressed with Catholic priests and nuns and their charity to the desperately poor coal mining labor union families during the Appalachian coal mining wars (he and his brothers were union guns, and killed a lot of Pinkertons before he took a bullet in the neck and then went into moonshining before joining on of the last active units of the U.S. cavalary in the early thirties. He admired Catholic charity/corporal works of mercy so much that he worked two jobs as a butcher in Detroit after WWII to come up with the tuition for yours truly to 12 years of Catholic grade and high school. During four years of college seminary, I was trained for the Vatican diplomatic service (but, that is another story). I got my JD from a Jesuit law school (Detroit). My only child is about to graduate from the best Jesuit high school in the U.S. (Regis) and will be a pre-med double major (philosophy and bio-chemistry, so he tells me) at Georgetown this fall. And, here I am, about to start my 25th year of teaching at this Catholic law school.

For the past several years, I have been the general counsel to the Catholic League, Bill D, et. al. Bill is registered Independent, and I may be the only life-long Democrat on the masthead. Hmmm, now what will Tom Hanks and Ron Howard do re: the Code? (We are working for a simple disclaimer, "this is a work of fiction") (but, that is another story, eh?)

I spend as much time at/with Opus Dei (the Work) as I do at the Catholic Worker (and, hey, the Work)! (P.S. And, when next in town, in addition to the CW Friday eve of reflection for the clarification of thought, I also highly recommend the Opus Dei first Monday of the month 5:45--8 PM eve of reflection (at the ODHQ, 139 Lexington Ave. and East 34th St., and superb spiritual directors, but that is another story) (St. Jose Maria was, by the Way (so to speak) a huge fan of St. Ignatius Loyola).

I am an exquisitely disaffected, stalwart pro-life Democrat (and democrat). I am a huge fan of Ex corde, now consigned to the dead letter file, although, as you heard him say, John A of NCR opines that Archbishop Miller, et. al., will perhaps be giving it another go. Through my mother's side of the family, I was/am closer to JPII than all but a few could ever begin to imagine. (My Jewish distinctly better half wept from the first moment she saw him at her first Papal audience in Rome many years ago; she keeps his cards on her windshield visor, and prayed to JPII as our son was taking the SAT----hmmm, ergo, Georgetown? (another story) (Her cousin supplied all of JPII's medical mechanical material, etc., and is the first Jewish person since Bob Hope to be a papal Knight of St. Gregory (Greg, this is the top of the papal knighthoods, if you are into that sort of thing, trumping easily the Ks of Malta, Holy Sepulchre, K of Columbus). (But, my wife's cousin is not my closest tie to JPII…..)

The point, gents, is that with my bizarro, eclectic background, I feel completely liberated and instantly at home in our Church's many, many settings, and, Greg, you should, too!!

David Gregory"