(Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with Catholic Legal Theory. But my honor as a Polack occasionally compels me to risk the penalty for irrelevant posting to share things like this.)
How many of us have heard, or even laughed about, the foolhardy gallantry of the Polish officers who tried to defend themselves against the invading Nazi tanks with a charge on horseback? But, as this recent piece in "The Guardian" points out, that story is a myth, propagated first by the occupying Germans, then by the occupying Soviets, then even by the Allies:
In fact, as the war historian and Times columnist Ben Macintyre recently wrote: "The Polish contribution to allied victory in the Second World War was extraordinary, perhaps even decisive, but for many years it was disgracefully played down, obscured by the politics of the Cold War."
Macintyre points out that one in 12 Battle of Britain pilots was a Pole, and some 250,000 Polish troops served with British forces, while a huge, largely forgotten role was also played by the Polish resistance.
The Home Army, as it was called, is thought to have been about 400,000-strong, and inflicted serious damage on German occupying forces throughout the war. The French resistance only grew to that size after D-Day, when the tide had already turned. But while the French were able to lead the liberation parade into Paris, the Polish Home Army and its memory were crushed by the country's new Soviet occupiers, with western acquiescence.
To appease Stalin, the Poles were not even invited to Britain's 1946 victory parade.
The Murphy Institute here at UST Law was recently privileged to host a lecture by Jim Towey (soon to be President of Ave Maria University), formerly director of President Bush's White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and founder of Aging with Dignity. He spoke about his experiences as the lawyer for Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, in a talk entitled: "Mother Teresa at 100: Reflections on Why Her Work is Just Beginning." Although I know most of us are too busy to fit in things like this, I strongly encourage you to watch the video of this talk that we have linked on the Murphy Institute website, here.
Towey is a highly entertaining, smart, sometimes irreverently witty, but deeply, deeply faith-filled man. His stories of Mother Teresa and his wise advice and counsel about living life as a continual response to God's call are truly inspiring. The one phrase of Mother Theresa's that he shared that has been tickling me since I heard it: "If you're too busy to pray, you're too busy."
Based on the time he spent at this lecture and in an informal session with our law students, I am confident that Ave Maria University is in excellent hands.
Mary Leary at Catholic University's Law School has organized what promises to be an excellent National Press Club program on April 7 (5 -- 6:30) on "Child Trafficking: America's Role in the Problem and Solution." Among the speakers are Luis CdeBaca, the U.S. Ambassador to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, and Peggy Healy, from Covenant House International.
Here's a conference description:
Slavery in 2011 has mutated but not disappeared. Today, it lives on in many forms, including modern child trafficking. Thousands of people, including children, are trafficking throughout the world each year. The United States has been designated as a source, transit, and destination country for trafficked children. This symposium will bring together various stakeholders including the U.S. Ambassador to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, to focus on the role of the United States in both the problem of child trafficking as well as the response. The conversation is intended as a substantive and productive discussion about current and future goals. It seeks to move the dialog forward for children by examining the reality of children trafficked in the Americas and the ability of U.S. society to respond. The panel will also expected to address current legislation regarding the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
UPDATE: Mary sent me this profile of Ambassador CdeBaca, who calls himself "a Vatican II baby", and describes how his Catholic faith shaped his vocation:
Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, a New Mexico-born Catholic of Mexican descent, who runs the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the State Department, readily acknowledges that the council's call to Catholics to engage the world guided his decision to become a civil rights lawyer and eventually to prosecute some of the country's largest human trafficking cases.
That call is especially meaningful, he told Catholic News Service, now that he heads the country's top office that works to disrupt the criminal networks that promote modern-day slavery and human abuse.
CdeBaca, 42, called himself "a Vatican II baby."
"It was very interesting to me," he said, "especially coming out of law school as a young civil rights lawyer, to really start digging deeper and to realize that Vatican II, if you looked at 'Gaudium et Spes' (the council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) and ... (understand) the real concrete church in the world type of things, wow."
....that was the headline on the front page of our local paper today, over a story about this report released yesterday by the White House: "Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being." The findings are old news to most of us, if we look around at our own work places. Despite the fact that more women are increasingly more likely than men to have a bachelor's or master's degree, and that the numbers of women and men in the labor fource are almost equal, "At all levels of education, women earn about 75% of what their male counterparts earned in 2009. In part because of these lower earnings and in part because unmarried and divorced women are the most likely to have responsibility for raising and supporting their children, women are more likely to be in poverty than men. These economic inequities are even more acute for women of color."
What does it look like where you work? How do the numbers of women colleagues at your level compare to the numbers of women who graduated from law school with you? I suspect almost all of us would have to say we've lost a couple (or five or six) somewhere along the way. The statistics in this forthcoming article substantiate that conclusion for law firms; I've documented the same on law school faculties in this article.
Does that bother you? Is there anything that can be done about it? Start by taking a look at the parenting leave policies at your own workplace. Do they make it possible for a woman who has more than one child to stay employed, let alone keep climbing up the ladder toward positions of the highest responsibility and salary? If not, maybe that's one place to start chipping away at the persistent (and clearly complex and multi-facetted) feminization of poverty.
In the days between my two Saturdays of watching all 10 Best Picture Oscar nominees with my son, my thoughts tend to focus on Hollywood. But, lest you have any doubt about the fact that God's radical call can come to people even on the most unlikely career trajectories -- such as pretty far up the ladder toward movie stardom -- check out the story of Mother Dolores Hart in a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly.
I will soon be beginning my annual Oscar movie orgy -- sitting in a movie theater with my teenaged-son for 2 Saturdays in a row, watching all 10 of the Best Picture nominees. (He's a senior in High School, so this might be our last time to do this together. What are the odds I'll make it through Toy Story 3 without needing about a box of kleenex?)
Before I submerge myself in the box office winners, I want to bring your attention to a movie that was not so successful, but was still one of my favorites from the past year: The Way Back. It tells the story of a band of men who escape from a Siberian gulag in 1940, and trek all the way through Siberia, Mongolia, across the Gobi dessert, to freedom in India. It has all the elements that go into some of my favorite movies -- Polish, Russian & German characters speaking in combinations of accented English & subtitles (including Colin Farrell fantastic as always as a Russian criminal with Lenin & Stalin's faces tatooed on his chest); incredible scenery; people struggling with inconceivable adversity -- from the bitter cold of the Siberian winter to the torture of thirst in the desert.
But I recommend it here on MOJ because it's also just bursting with Christian imagery and symbolism -- crowns of thorns, crosses, images of Mary, etc. The main psychological thread of the movie involves questions of redemption and forgiveness. Most fascinating to me, though, is the role played by the only significant female role in the movie, a young Polish refuge who joins this band of men halfway through the movie. I don't want to spoil anything, but I challenge you to think about the role she plays in the survival of this band -- including in a surprising way towards the end of the movie. It struck me as an interesting example of how the relative strengths of men and women can play off each other in different circumstances.
I just got back from Loyola University Chicago, where I had the pleasure of being invited by the Sister Ann Ida Gannon Center for Women and Leadership to contribute to a panel of women engaging in what was billed as "A conversation at the intersection of professional life, the practice of faith, and working toward the common good", Women Shaping the Church. The other panelists were Simone Campbell, SSS, JD, Executive Director of NETWORK, telling the story of how she came to draft the letter in support of the Senate Healthcare bill that was signed by about 60 women's religious orders; Mary Ann Zollmann, BVM, President of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, explaining how her order dealt with the recent Apostolic visitation; and Judge Sheila O'Brien, Justice of the Illinois Appellate Court, who recently wrote an op-ed piece in the Chicago Tribune that's gotten a lot of attention: Excommunicate Me, Please. We were moderated by Lisa Sowle Cahill, who was recently spotlighted in Commonweal.
It was an extraordinarily stimulating, positive, energizing conversation about women's role in the Church. We all expressed varying degrees of frustration at various aspects of this issue, but the overall tone of the conversation stressed our common love for the Church, and our desire to participate in finding the right space for the application of the particular feminine genius to the issues most dear to each of us.
I was struck by how significantly Loyola's undergraduate campus is marked by the presence of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The organizer of the event, Janet Sisler, is the relatively-new Director of the Gannon Center for Women in Leadership. If the charisma, energy, tact and love for the Church that she demonstrated in orchestrating this event are any indication of where Loyola is heading, I expect great things from the next generation of women leaders in the Church coming out of Chicago!
Today's "Daily Thought from Jean Vanier" is too lovely for me not to share:
The life that begins when a child is conceived is a powerful reality, hidden in that first cell. This life is not just a physical thing, allowing the growth of the tiny body with all its organs, but also something psychological and spiritual. The power of life hidden in the body pushes the tiny child out of the womb of his mother and into her arms, and invites him to enjoy his parents love, to advance through life, to acquire knowledge, to be independent of his parents, to love others, to open himself to the world, to create and procreate.
There are a number of life forces working along side each other, one to form the body, one to create relationships, and another to develop knowledge and creativity. All is united. All is one, contained in that life hidden in the first cell. It is at the root of all movement and all physical growth, but also of all relationships, all growth in knowledge, all spiritual activity.
John Allen sets the record straight on the upcoming Discovery Channel reality show "The Exorcist Files" that I mentioned earlier. Still sounds interesting to me..... but Allen's article is even more interesting.
This isn't Catholic Legal Theory, either, but it's important to those to whom it might be relevant. I just received a notice from a friend (Amy Kuebelbeck) about a forthcoming book which she co-edited: A Gift of Time: Continuing Your Pregnancy When Your Baby’s Life Is Expected to Be Brief, coming out on Jan. 26 from Johns Hopkins University Press.
The description from the notice:
This book is written for parents who learn through prenatal diagnosis that their baby likely will die before or after birth and who wish to continue the pregnancy and embrace whatever time they are able to have together. Based on material from more than 120 parents from across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, A Gift of Time draws extensively from parent experiences and includes many direct quotes that tell powerful stories of their own. Full of practical suggestions for parents and for caregivers, it also promotes the innovative concept of perinatal hospice and palliative care.
I haven't read this new book, but I have read Amy's memoir about this experience: Waiting with Gabriel: A Story of Cherishing a Baby's Brief Life. That book was one of the most beautiful and profound meditations on love and the value of life that I've ever read. I'm sure this new collection will be just as beautiful and profound.
