OPINION
4
Contact us For information regarding the Opinion page, contact Editor Susan Hartley at 773-2721, or send an email to sharley@civitasmedia.com
MONDAY, JULY 1, 2013
Piqua Daily Call
www.dailycall.com
Politics
Senators: Student loan interest rates to double
Serving Piqua since 1883
“But Jesus beheld them, and said to them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26 AKJV)
Commentary
Catholics must communicate better ’ve been spending the better part of the last week among Catholics who communicate. They’re people of varied backKATHY LOPEZ grounds and politics who love their church. We’re at Columnist the annual meeting of the Catholic Press Association, where I’ve been asked to speak a few times. But what I’ve been doing more of is listening. What I’ve been hearing is an acknowledgment that something’s gone terribly wrong. Not that church teaching has to be overhauled, as is so often the assumption in media, but that we need to communicate better. We need to be more consistent witnesses of an alternative to the conventional. Frank Bruni, writing in his New York Times column, recently excoriated the church for its continued encouragement to men and women with same-sex attractions to live lives of chastity. Bruni focuses on recent comments by New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the best-known of any contemporary U.S. bishop, teaching that sexual love is “intended only for a man and woman in marriage.”This, Bruni says, “assigns homosexuals a status separate from, and unequal to, the one accorded heterosexuals: You’re OK, but you’re really not OK. Upon you there is a special restriction, and for you there is a fundamental dimension of the human experience that is off-limits, a no-fly zone of the heart.” But what’s missing here is the fact that there are many men and women who do not have same-sex attractions who are not married, but want to be. I met some of them, as I do just about everywhere, in Denver this week. One young woman talked about her desire for marriage, her desire to know that’s her vocation, while acknowledging that she is already serving God as a single woman, at her job, in her community and among friends. She’s not going to let what she lacks, and really wants, impede her gratitude. It might, in fact, be a bit of an indictment of Catholic communicators — both preachers and laypeople — that Bruni can easily write: “Let’s leave aside the legions of straight people, Catholic and otherwise, who aren’t tucking their sex lives into a box that tidy, tiny and fecundityminded.” I don’t know about the “otherwise,” but Cardinal Dolan’s primary obligation is to the Catholics, as a spiritual shepherd. And regardless of your sexual attractions, what Dolan said holds for all: Sexual union is a glorious one meant for marriage. Which gets back to the discussions here this week. We live in the world. We know too many of us aren’t taking what we say we believe seriously. A Catholic governor of New York made increased abortion access in his state a priority. A Catholic former Speaker of the House shut down a legitimate question about brutal late-term abortions, insisting the topic had some kind of “sacred ground” protection. And how many weddings have you attended in a Catholic church after the couple had already spent months, if not years, playing house? Living as though married, with only a party delayed, the “sacrament” performed only for the sake of nostalgia or pictures? That one woman I mentioned echoes the thoughts of many young people I’ve encountered over the past few years: She loves God, she loves her church and she is open to sacrifice to do God’s will in her life. There’s a sacrificial aspect to our lives.While religious faith is a source of hope and joy, there is no escaping the fact that life can have its share of hell. We don’t escape that. We seek to bring good to situations we wouldn’t have necessarily scripted for ourselves. Mother Dolores Hart is at this conference. Many know her as the nun who kissed Elvis. Dolores Hart had a successful acting career, having starred in two movies with Presley, among others, but found herself called to a life of contemplative prayer. She now emanates wisdom and peace, but recalls crying herself to sleep for the first seven years in the convent. Sometimes we don’t understand all the reasons why we are where we are. In her memoir, “The Ear of the Heart,” Mother Dolores writes: “To enter the contemplative life truly, you have to go through a narrow, lonely place in your being, where you face all your fears and selfish patterns, even when you don’t know what these are. I thought I was very grown-up, very mature. You don’t realize what a child you are until God tests your heart and you go through that deep place all of us have to go through.” A key question of the day: What are we here for? We may just be here for one another, but not in the ways that culture assumes. The Catholic Church, throughout the country and world, offers opportunities for spiritual growth and temporal support for all.The church is for sinners, and that will be all too evident at times, but she does offer something: not utopia, but a way to journey together to something beautiful and live in union with the source of all beauty. In his Times column, Bruni admits to sadness upon witnessing hypocrisy. That’s an overwhelming reality of our day. I’m sorry we are all so damn human, or the overwhelming countercultural witness of real Christianity would be inspiring and uplifting. That’s the only successful communications strategy for a church: Be for real.
I
Commentary
What a week! universities more diverse, very once in a while, dynamic and representathe United States tive places to learn and Supreme Court degrow. cides a landmark case that Most people don’t realchanges the course of ize we don’t have a constiAmerican history. For the tutional right to vote. True, nine justices, “every once in the 15th, 19th and 26th a while” suddenly became amendments prohibit disfour times in a single week. DONNA BRAZILE crimination based on race, In the past seven days, the sex or age, but the chaos Supreme Court resolved Columnist that has accompanied so four blockbuster cases — and each one raised the same fundamen- many elections — federal, state and local tal questions. To what extent do minorities — since 2000 indicates it may be time to share in the “inalienable rights of life, lib- consider an amendment to standardize erty and the pursuit of happiness”? How the voting process and to provide protecfar does the Equal Protection Clause of the tions against disenfranchisement. Maybe 14th Amendment extend? And how does it’s time for a Right to Vote Amendment. In the other two cases, one challenging government “of the people, by the people, for the people” survive without progress the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and the other California’s Proposition 8 ban on toward a more perfect union? The Supreme Court did not address marriage equality, the Supreme Court those questions directly, of course, but its again brought out the red pen. But this decisions impact how we define ourselves time it struck down discriminatory laws as a nation through our laws. And on af- - laws that were enacted at a time when firmative action, voting rights and federal the majority of Americans still saw LGBT and state marriage law, the Supreme people as strangers, even a threat. Now Court’s answers were troublingly mixed. If that these laws are gone, the LGBT movenothing else, the aftermath reveals just ment hopes to secure corrective legislation how much work is left to do to build that of its own — guaranteeing workplace nondiscrimination and national federal recogmore perfect union. Affirmative action and the Voting nition of same-sex marriage. When these four rulings are taken toRights Act of 1965 not only helped dismantle the stone wall of discrimination gether, they provide a powerful lesson and the maze of injustice constructed dur- about how all movements for justice are ing centuries of slavery and legal segrega- linked. The LGBT community should look tion, they continue to keep clear the path to the rulings on affirmative action and to the polls and to keep fertile the field of voting rights and see that certain ideoloopportunity. At least, they did — until this gies will always be hostile to minority groups seeking to chart a better future. week. During the middle decades of the 20th And African-American, Hispanic and century, the civil rights movement, and other ethnic minorities should look to elected leaders who were “Profiles in these victories for marriage equality and Courage” in their own right, helped usher see echoes of their own history — and emin a new era. Those of us who grew up in brace a shared struggle. Our nation must better itself. It always that era witnessed breathtaking historical changes — changes that often moved us to has, and now we must continue anew. The tears. For some, the 2008 election of our Supreme Court makes a lot of noise. nation’s biracial president was a culmina- Sometimes it sings in harmony with histion; for others, a beginning. Truly though, tory, and sometimes it caws against it. It would do well to remember that the it was both. As a young African-American woman, I melody of freedom is heard in the choir of watched Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the people. At its best, the Supreme Court can help other human rights leaders fight — and too often die — to correct the injustices of guide our journey, following the course the past. Their eventual legislative tri- charted by our founding documents. It can umphs proved to a nation divided that this correct us when we stray as a nation. But country could come together to do big it can also be profoundly wrong. Ultimately, it is the American people things and seek our better angels. But in two separate rulings, the Court who must decide what kind of nation we jeopardized that legacy and weakened the hope to be. Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice power of this country to fix injustice. The Thurgood Marshall, Dr. King and Harvey conservative Justices struck down a key Milk were all citizens alike. And even after portion of the Voting Rights Act — in part a week like this, it’s only together that we because it had been too successful at tack- can do what’s right. ling the discriminatory barriers to the balDonna Brazile is a senior Democratic lot it had been written to correct. And the justices sent a significant case challenging strategist, a political commentator and affirmative action policies back to a lower contributor to CNN and ABC News, and a court, inviting intense scrutiny upon a pol- contributing columnist to Ms. Magazine icy that has helped make our colleges and and O, the Oprah Magazine.
E
THE FIRST AMENDMENT Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Where to Write
Public officials can be contacted through the following addresses and telephone numbers: ■ Lucy Fess, mayor, 5th Ward Commissioner, ward5comm@piquaoh.org, 773-7929 (home) ■ John Martin, 1st Ward Commissioner, ward1comm@piquaoh.org, 773-2778 (home) ■ William Vogt, 2nd Ward Commissioner, ward2comm@piquaoh.org, 773-8217 ■ Joe Wilson, 3rd Ward Commissioner, ward3comm@piquaoh.org, 778-0390 ■ Judy Terry, 4th Ward Commissioner, ward4comm@piquaoh.org, 773-3189 ■ City Manager Gary Huff, ghuff@piquaoh.org, 778-2051 ■ Miami County Commissioners: John Kathryn Lopez is the editor-at-large of National Review “Bud” O’Brien, Jack Evans and Richard Online www.nationalreview.com. She can be contacted at Cultice, 201 W. Main St., Troy, OH klopez@nationalreview.com. 45373 440-5910; commissioners@co-
miami.oh.us ■ John R. Kasich, Ohio governor, Vern Riffe Center, 77 S. High St., Columbus, OH 43215, (614) 644-0813, Fax: (614) 466-9354 ■ State Sen. Bill Beagle, 5th District, Ohio Senate, First Floor, Columbus, Ohio 43215; (614) 466-6247; e-mail: SD05@sen.state.oh.us ■ State Rep. Richard Adams, 79th District, House of Representatives, The Riffe Center, 77 High St. 13th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215, (614) 466-8114, Fax: (614) 719-3979; district79@ohr.state.oh.us ■ Jon Husted, Secretary of State, 180 E. Broad St. 15th floor, Columbus, OH 53266-0418 (877) 767-6446, (614)466-2655; ■ David Yost, State Auditor, 88 E. Broad St., 5th floor, Columbus, OH 43215,
WASHINGTON (AP) — Student loan rates will double Monday — at least for a while — after a compromise to keep student loan interest rates low proved unwinnable before the July 1 deadline, senators said Thursday. Sen. Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate education panel, said none of the proposals being circulating among lawmakers could win passage, and he urged lawmakers to extend the current rates for another year when they return from the July 4 recess. Harkin said his colleagues could retroactively restore the current rates after the holiday. “Let’s put this off for a year,” Harkin, D-Iowa, told reporters. Interest rates on new subsidized Stafford loans are set to go from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on Monday unless lawmakers take action. Congress’ Joint Economic Committee estimates the increase will cost the average student $2,600. “Neither party wants to see rates rise next week,” said Sen. Richard Burr, RN.C. But a one-year rate extension isn’t an acceptable option, either, he said. “Last year we kicked the can down the road and passed a one-year extension for only a small group of students. ... Why would we make the same mistake again and just kick the can down the road another year?” said Burr, who was among a group of senators who worked on a competing proposal with Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va. The Manchin-led proposal would link interest rates to the financial markets. It borrowed heavily from a version House Republicans passed earlier and from principles included in President Barack Obama’s budget proposal.
Letters Send your signed letters to the editor, Piqua Daily Call, P.O. Box 921, Piqua, OH 45356. Send letters by e-mail to shartley@civitasmedia.com. Send letters by fax to (937) 773-2782. There is a 400-word limit for letters to the editor. Letters must include a telephone number, for verification purposes only.
FRANK BEESON GROUP PUBLISHER
SUSAN HARTLEY EXECUTIVE EDITOR
LEIANN STEWART ADVERTISING MANAGER
CHERYL HALL CIRCULATION MANAGER A CIVITAS MEDIA NEWSPAPER 100 FOX DR., SUITE B PIQUA, OHIO 45356 (937) 773-2721 WWW.DAILYCALL.COM