CSotD: Religion and Politics and a Tribute
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Francis provides a final Christmas-themed cartoon for the year and triggers a good memory from back in my Catholic days.
Until relatively recent years, you were required to attend the parish in your neighborhood and, since priests are assigned by the bishop rather than recruited by the parishioners, the match wasn't always ideal, to say the least.
There were exceptions to that rule, at least in history. In the 19th century, in Northeastern New York, there were a number of French-speaking people and, unlike in cities, it wasn't really practical for them to flock around a French parish.
Now, the Mass itself was celebrated in Latin, so that didn't matter, but the sermon was not, nor was any counseling and confessing that took place, so, regardless of home address, francophones went to francophone churches and anglophones went to anglophone churches, which, in rural areas, could be a considerable haul.
Two priests in neighboring but linguistically separate parishes about 5 miles apart were talking about this and came up with a plan to swap churches each week, so that their distant parishioners would only have to make the long trip every other week.
However, it didn't happen, because the parishioners of one parish nailed their church doors shut so that the Mass would not be celebrated there in the wrong language.
Which suggests that there hasn't been a lot of change in the prevailing spirit since, and certainly not very much of that other Spirit.
None of which is what today's Francis brought to mind, except that, once upon a time when we lived in a neighborhood whose parish we didn't like, we became bootleg parishioners of the one downtown instead.
We particularly liked Father Hanifen, a wise, funny, charitable man who not only preached tolerance but lived it, and was more apt to talk about our duty to the homeless, for instance, than to rail at us about birth control.
He eventually made bishop, which we all assumed was some kind of clerical(!) error, because, in private conversation, he criticized "fat priests in fat cars" and, well, he didn't seem like bishop material, at least as most of us had experienced it.
He didn't — couldn't, really — totally refuse the pomp, circumstance and regalia that came with the office, but he kept it to a very bare minimum and did not go out and get that fat car.
He was the Bishop in the Buick, and not even a new Buick. Same one he'd had before.
Best story about the Bish was that, at the party celebrating his elevation, some Knights of Columbus fellow asked to kiss his new episcopal ring, and Bishop Hanifen said "Yes."
Then took the ring from his finger and slipped it into his hip pocket.
If they were all like him, I might have stuck around.
You get one. This one. Then that's all.
In today's Warped, Michael Cavna has the taste to simply offer a tribute rather than a maudlin collection of weeping droids or whatever.
And, while he hasn't joined the cartoonists who regularly write essays for each cartoon, his separate column is a good match this time, and well worth reading.
Okay, one more Carrie Cartoon …
Darrin Bell's offering on the topic gets in because he used Fisher's death to make a better-than-average commentary on 2016. And, BTW, you can see his best-of-the-year collection here.
Then, over at Cartoon Movement, Tjeerd Royaards offers an even less cheerful thought, with a nice graphic pun, if that's what you call it.
That's what I call it, anyway: Using one image in place of a close visual equivalent.
In any case, I suspect that ol' Janus is longing for a double-blindfold about now, because there's not much anyone would want to see, looking backwards or forwards.
Though, goo'ness gracious, we don't have to be quite as pessimistic about it as Carmen.
In fact, not only does Retail suggest an alternate way to deal with the Bleak New World – one that I've actually seen several people in real life adopting since the elections – but apparently Jeff Bezos' acquisition of the Washington Post is paying off.
I don't know if this is a "disclaimer" or a "suggestion," but I've subscribed to the Post. And I like that Donnie refers to Cooper's paper as the "dead tree edition" because it's just the kind of snot-nosed hipsterism that got us here in the first place.
There was a time when newspaper editors refused to run articles about television because they felt the new medium was a threat, and that was silly. But there's a middle ground somewhere between not covering major developments in the world at all and climbing into bed to snuggle with them.
Running articles in print newspapers about how un-hip it is to read a "dead tree" newspaper was probably not the best way to build cred with young readers. Or, at least, not in a way that would sustain your employment.
Maybe print can make a comeback, the way vinyl is doing.
Or do you call it "dead dinosaur music"?
Toles in Review
Tom Toles has his annual review of cartoons here. His work is another reason, besides Ann Telnaes and Michael Cavna, that I chose that particular paper to support, though I was a Toles fan back in his Buffalo days.
And not just for his cartoons. As a person in New York involved in Newspapers-in-Education, I had a lot of contact with the woman who administered the program for the Buffalo News, and she sang Tom's praises because not only did he nearly always have time to talk and sketch with the kids she brought in for tours, but each year he'd do a special holiday card for her program.
Which is also how you build audience for the future.
They should make him a bishop.
Now here's your dead-tree moment of zen:
Those were the days.
Because guess which one of these guys is in charge of most newsrooms today.
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