OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2015
The plot to change Catholicism
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Need for workforce
housing is palpable
T
he Astoria-born historian Dorothy Johansen was fond of
saying: “History is made up of two things – continuity
and change.” These days, there seems to be more change than
continuity. When one revisits some cities and towns, they
seem to have changed beyond recognition.
This week’s issue of
Willamette Week carries a
compelling confessional ti-
tled “Portland, I Love You, but
You’re Forcing Me Out.” The
writer, who is an artist named
Carye Bye, tells of being priced
out of 6an Francisco, ¿nding a
golden moment in Portland that
ended when her rent was jacked
up. So she’s off to San Antonio.
If you lived in Portland two
decades prior to Bye, you might
say that era seemed like a golden
period, when the city boasted a
large middle class. The crush of
rising home prices and rent hikes
on the West Coast makes one
wonder how ordinary people can
afford to live in San Francisco or
Seattle, for instance.
Bye’s most pungent com-
ment on the place she is leaving
is: “Today Portland feels like a
theme park version of itself.”
Astoria lately has become a
receiver of former Portlanders,
Californians and Seattlites. Our
home prices and rentals have
been a magnet. At the same time,
feverish bidding on homes is a
new thing in this market. And
vacant rentals are more scarce.
At a recent Astoria City Council
meeting, the rental landlord
Sean Fitzpatrick said that the
town’s effective vacancy rate is
zero. Articles in Wednesday’s
and today’s edition report on
that topic.
Housing de¿nes what can
happen in a city or town. The
need for more Astoria work-
force housing is palpable.
Students whose families
move are a reality
Why not plan and coordinate for that?
A
t about this point in every
recent year, Oregon gets to
have a good old-fashioned Àagel-
lation about high school gradua-
tion rates that hover near the bot-
tom of national rankings. It was
statewide news this week when
2014 statistics showed Oregon
47th in the U.S. — up from 50th a
year before, better only than 51st
place Washington, D.C.
Oregon’s improvement mostly
came from rede¿ning graduates
to include “students with special
needs who earned modi¿ed diplo-
mas, and students who delayed
receiving a diploma in order to
pursue low-cost college cred-
its,” according to OPB’s report.
Putting an implausible gloss on
the news, a state education of¿-
cial expressed pride in how well
each and every student is being
prepared for life.
Washington state’s graduation
rate also is less than stellar, com-
ing in 38th in this week’s news.
Considering we in the Paci¿c
Northwest — like residents of the
mythical village of Lake Wobegon
— consider all our children to
be above average, it’s a blow to
self-esteem and sense of econom-
ic destiny to be told more than a
quarter of Oregon’s young people
aren’t successfully ¿nishing the
basic hurdle of high school.
This is a matter of serious
concern and deserves plenty of
attention. But there is too much
focus on individual schools and
not nearly enough on state and
national failings.
Astoria
Principal
Lynn
Jackson makes an entirely valid
point about how graduation sta-
tistics can be warped from one
year to the next by some families’
unsettled lives. Students who land
in Astoria, attend school for a few
weeks, and then just as swiftly
depart, make an oversized impact
on graduation rates. Countywide,
two-thirds to three-quarters of
each year’s class does success-
fully complete high school. They
are very likely to have also ben-
e¿ted from stable home lives, an
advantage that is entirely alien to
students whose families are con-
stantly on the move.
Instead of congratulating or
castigating ourselves for a few
percentage points change in grad-
uation success or failure, society
and state agencies ought to be
creating better ways to maintain a
rigorous focus on individual stu-
dents, strategies that span across
district boundaries and state lines.
In our interconnected nation,
educators must develop much
better ways to mitigate the dam-
age to children when parents
move around. Though it will be
controversial among those who
favor local control over all oth-
er considerations, keeping kids
from falling through the cracks
deserves strong national and re-
gional coordination. There should
be individual education-success
plans that stick with students,
even when their families move
from California to Oregon to
Washington, and back again.
There must be resources and an
interstate management structure
to make these plans effective.
Yes, let’s hold school districts
accountable. But the real issue is
national responsibility for mento-
ring students in a mobile society,
in which economic uncertainties
guarantee many families will
have to uproot children time after
time. We need to base education
policies on the belief that every
citizen has a stake in the success
of every student, not just the ones
that happen to be in our district at
any given moment.
By ROSS DOUTHAT
New York Times News Service
T
he Vatican always seems to
have the secrets and intrigues
of a Renaissance court — which,
in a way, is what it still remains.
The ostentatious humility of
Pope Francis, his scoldings of
high-ranking prelates, have changed
this not at all; if anything, the pon-
tiff’s ambitions have encouraged
plotters and counterplotters to work
with greater vigor.
And right
now the chief
plotter is the
pope himself.
Francis’ pur-
pose is simple:
He favors the
proposal, put
forward by the
church’s liberal
cardinals, that
Ross
would
allow
Douthat
divorced and re-
married Catho-
lics to receive communion without hav-
ing their ¿rst marriage declared null.
Thanks to the pope’s tacit support,
this proposal became a central contro-
versy in last year’s synod on the fam-
ily and the larger follow-up, ongoing
in Rome right now.
But if his purpose is clear, his path
is decidedly murky. Procedurally, the
pope’s powers are near-absolute: If
Francis decided tomorrow to endorse
communion for the remarried, there is
no Catholic Supreme Court that could
strike his ruling down.
At the same time, though, the
pope is supposed to have no power
to change Catholic doctrine. This rule
has no of¿cial enforcement mecha-
nism (the Holy Spirit is supposed to
be the crucial check and balance), but
custom, modesty, fear of God and fear
of schism all restrain popes who might
¿nd a doctrinal rewrite tempting.
And a change of doctrine is what
conservative Catholics, quite reason-
ably, believe that the communion pro-
posal favored by Francis essentially
implies.
There’s probably a fascinating
secular political science tome to be
written on how the combination of
absolute and absolutely-limited pow-
er shapes the papal of¿ce. In such
a book, Francis’ recent maneuvers
would deserve a chapter, because he’s
clearly looking for a mechanism that
would let him exercise his powers
without undercutting his authority.
The key to this search has been
the synods, which have no of¿cial
Andrew Medichini/AP Photo
Pope Francis greets faithful as he arrives for his weekly general audi-
ence in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday.
doctrinal role but which can project “doctors of the law,” its modern legal-
an image of ecclesiastical consensus. ists and Pharisees — a not-even-thin-
So a strong synodal statement endors- ly-veiled signal of his views.
ing communion for the remarried as a
(Though of course, in the New
merely “pastoral” change, not a doc- Testament the Pharisees allowed di-
trinal alteration, would make Francis’ vorce; it was Jesus who rejected it.)
task far easier.
And yet his plan is not necessar-
Unfortunately, such a statement ily succeeding. There reportedly still
has proved dif¿cult to extract — be- isn’t anything like a majority for the
cause the ranks of Catholic bishops proposal within the synod, which is
include so many Bene-
probably why the orga-
dict XVI and John Paul
nizers hedged their bets
The
II-appointed conserva-
for a while about wheth-
tives, and also because
er there would even be a
chief
the “pastoral” argument
¿nal document. And the
is basically just rubbish.
conservatives — Afri-
plotter
The church’s teach-
can, Polish, American,
ing that marriage is in-
Australian — have been
is the
dissoluble has already
less surprised than last
pope
fall, and quicker to draw
been pushed close to the
lines and try to
breaking point by this
himself. public
box the pontiff in with
pope’s new expedited an-
private appeals.
nulment process; going
The entire situation abounds
all the way to communion without
with ironies. Aging progressives are
annulment would just break it.
So to overcome resistance from seizing a moment they thought had
bishops who grasp this obvious point, slipped away, trying to outmaneuver
¿rst last year’s synod and now this younger conservatives who recent-
one have been, to borrow from the ly thought they owned the Catholic
Vatican journalist Edward Pentin’s re- future. The African bishops are de-
cent investigative book, “rigged” by fending the faith of the European past
the papal-appointed organizers in fa- against Germans and Italians weary
of their own patrimony. A Jesuit pope
vor of the pope’s preferred outcome.
The documents guiding the synod is effectively at war with his own
have been written with that goal in Congregation for the Doctrine of the
mind. The pope has made appoint- Faith, the erstwhile Inquisition — a
ments to the synod’s ranks with that situation that would make 16th cen-
goal in mind, not hesitating to add tury heads spin.
For a Catholic journalist, for any
even aged cardinals tainted by the sex
abuse scandal if they are allied to the journalist, it’s a fascinating story,
cause of change. The Vatican press and speaking strictly as a journalist, I
of¿ce has ¿ltered the synod’s closed- have no idea how it will end.
Speaking as a Catholic, I expect
door (per the pope’s directive) debates
to the media with that goal in mind. the plot to ultimately fail; where the
The churchmen charged with writing pope and the historic faith seem to be
the ¿nal synod report have been select- in tension, my bet is on the faith.
But for an institution that mea-
ed with that goal in mind. And Fran-
cis himself, in his daily homilies, has sures its life span in millennia, “ulti-
consistently criticized Catholicism’s mately” can take a long time to arrive.
Are you sure you want the job?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times News Service
H
Welcome to the future of
warfare: superpowers versus
superempowered angry men
aving watched all the de-
bates and seen all these
people running for president, I of cybercriminals and cy-
can’t suppress the thought: Why berterrorists. They’re all a
would anyone want this job now? byproduct of a profound
Do you people realize what’s go-
ing on out there?
Barack Obama’s hair hasn’t gone
early gray for nothing. I mean, Air
Force One is great and all, but it now
comes with Afghanistan, ISIS and the
Republican Freedom Caucus — not
to mention a lot of people, places and
things all coming unstuck at once.
Consider the scariest news article
this year. On Friday, The Washing-
ton Post reported that “the Justice
Department has charged a hacker in
Malaysia with stealing the person-
al data of U.S. service members and
passing it to the Islamic State terrorist
group, which urged supporters online
to attack them.” The article explained
that in June Ardit Ferizi, the leader of
a group of ethnic Albanian hackers
from Kosovo who call themselves
Kosova Hackers Security, “hacked
into a server used by a U.S. online re-
tail company” and “obtained data on
about 100,000 people.”
Ferizi, it said, “is accused of pass-
ing the data to Islamic State member
Junaid Hussain, a British citizen who
in August posted links on Twitter to
the names, email addresses, pass-
words, locations and phone numbers
of 1,351 U.S. military and other gov-
ernment personnel. He included a
warning that Islamic State ‘soldiers ...
will strike at your necks in your own
lands!’” FBI agents tracked Ferizi “to
a computer with an Internet address
in Malaysia,” where he was arrested.
Meanwhile, Hussain was killed by a
U.S. drone in Syria.
Wow: An Albanian hacker in Ma-
laysia collaborating with an ISIS ji-
hadi on Twitter to intimidate U.S sol-
diers online — before we killed the
jihadi with a drone!
Welcome to the future of warfare:
superpowers versus superempow-
ered angry men — and a tag-team
ing the lid off nation-states
in the Middle East and Af-
rica, unleashing sectarian
technology-driven inÀec-
conÀicts that no dictator
tion point that will greet
can suppress. Bad guys
the next president and will
are getting superempow-
make the current debates
ered and “mutually assured
destruction” to ISIS is not
look laughably obsolete in
a deterrent but an invita-
four years.
tion to heaven. Robots are
I was born into the Cold
milking cows and IBM’s
War era. It was a danger-
Thomas L.
Watson computer can beat
ous time with two nucle-
Friedman
you at “Jeopardy!” and
ar-armed superpowers each
holding a gun to the other’s head, and your doctor at radiology, so every
the doctrine of “mutually assured decent job requires more technical
destruction” kept both in check. But and social skills — and continuous
we now know that the dictators that learning. In the West, a smaller num-
both America and Russia propped up ber of young people, with billions in
in the Middle East and Africa sup- college tuition debts, will have to pay
the Medicare and Social Security for
pressed volcanic sectarian conÀicts.
The ¿rst decades of the post-Cold the baby boomers now retiring, who
War era were also a time of relative will be living longer.
“Suddenly,” argues Dobbs, “the
stability. Dictators in Eastern Europe
and Latin America gave way to dem- number of people who don’t believe
ocratically elected governments and they will be better off than their par-
free markets. Boris Yeltsin of Russia ents goes from zero to 25 percent or
never challenged NATO expansion, more.”
When you are advancing, you buy
and the Internet and global supply
chains drove pro¿tability up and the the system; you don’t care who’s a
cost of labor and goods down. Interest billionaire, because your life is im-
rates were low, and although the in- proving. But when you stop advanc-
come of men without college degrees ing, added Dobbs, you can “lose
declined, it was masked by rising faith in the system — whether that be
home prices, subprime mortgages, globalization, free trade, offshoring,
easy credit, falling taxes and wom- immigration, traditional Republicans
en joining the workforce, so many or traditional Democrats. Because in
household incomes continued to rise. one way or another they can be per-
“Up until the year 2000, over 95 ceived as not working for you.”
And that is why Donald Trump
percent of the next generation were
better off than the previous genera- is resonating in America, Marine
tion,” said Richard Dobbs, a director Le Pen in France, the ISIS caliph in
of the McKinsey Global Institute. the Arab world, and Vladimir Putin
Therefore, even though the rich were in Russia. They all promise to bring
getting even richer than those down back the certainties and prosperity
the income ladder “it did not lead to of the Cold War or post-Cold War
political unrest because the middle eras — by sacking the traditional
was moving ahead, too” and were elites who got us here and by build-
ing walls against change and against
sure to be richer than their parents.
But, in the last decade, we entered the superempowered angry men.
the post-post-Cold War era. The com- They are all false prophets, but the
bination of technological, economic storm they promise to hold back is
and climate pressures is literally blow- very real.