Cakes and Ale

By Philip E. Jenks

September 29, 2016 – The unexpected highlight of the first presidential debate of the 2016 season was Hillary Clinton’s response when Donald Trump unleashed a sniffily incoherent attack.

“Okay!” she exclaimed, beaming. And she shimmied defiantly, knowing she had lured the Donald into a rhetorical trap.

What millions saw was a misogynistic (and thoroughly unprepared) male attempting to bully his way to advantage over the smartest woman in the room.

The male assumption of natural superiority over women, especially claimed by rich and powerful males, extends back several millennia. The notion is laughable and that’s why it runs throughout the Mel Brooks canon of films, most notably in his 1993 opus, Robin Hood, Men in Tights.

In the climatic scene, King Richard (Patrick Stewart) pulls the beautiful Maid Marion (Amy Yasbeck) into his arms and plants a lingering and passionate kiss on her fulsome lips.

Rabbi Tuckman watches intently before giving the audience an approving wink: “It’s good to be the king.”

Brooks knows kings have been getting away with serious crap over the centuries, including having their way with willing and unwilling maidens. It’s not that Brooks approves of monarchial rape or any other abuse of power but he thinks power can be dramatically dissipated if we laugh at it. Audiences in Germany reportedly doubled up over Brooks’ “Springtime for Hitler.”

But time was when laughing at Nazis and kings was a capital offense. So it was throughout much of human history, and so it was in the time of King Ahasuerus (ah-HAZ-er-us) of Persia, a central and certainly the most powerful figure in the book of Esther.

Ahasuerus was megalomaniacal, ravenous for power, and – if the book of Esther is any indication – a devoted alcoholic whose liver must have resembled a hair ball. As the narrative opens, the king is in the midst of a six-month party in which “drinking was by flagons, without restraint” (1:8).

Since the point of the party was to show off the king’s great wealth, the image of the palace that comes to mind is a gilded Animal House. And, as was true of virtually every Persian male alive in 450 B.C., Ahasuerus was a devoted misogynist.

The Greek version of Ahasuerus’ name is Xerxes, which many people find easier to pronounce because they remember Cecil B. DeMille’s histrionic intonation in his biblical epics: ZIRK-sees!

Most historians believe that Ahasuerus and Xerxes the First are one in the same. That would make the biblical Ahasuerus the devious victor of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. when his vast army destroyed a much smaller Greek militia. Afterwards, according to some reports (although no archaeological evidence exists), Xerxes is said to have burned the city of Athens to the ground.

The Ahasuerus we meet in Esther is not a monarch to trifle with. He has the power to bestow great riches upon his friends, and he could instantly execute anyone who inadvertently annoyed him. As he drained flagon after flagon of wine, no one knew where his foggy inebriation might lead.

As it turned out, “when the king was merry with wine, he commanded … the seven eunuchs who attended him to bring Queen Vashti before the king, wearing the royal crown, in order to show the peoples and the officials her beauty; for she was fair to behold. But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command … At this the king was enraged, and his anger burned within him.” (1:10-12).

What on earth got into Vashti, that she committed a capital offense by refusing a lawful order of the king?

The verdict of history seems to depend on the gender of the historian.

My own suspicion, admittedly Y-chromosomal, is that Vashti’s refusal is a rash and even arrogant test of her power over a king she knows to be smitten by her good looks. It makes you think of other ambitious queens, including Ann Boleyn whose miscalculation of her power over King Henry VIII led to the cleaving of her head.

The author of Esther seems to share that view. The angry King Ahasuerus summons his sages to ask what should be done with a wife who disobeys her king.

Misogyny throbs in their manly solution:

“For this deed of the queen will be made known to all women, causing them to look with contempt on their husbands, since they will say, ‘King Ahasuerus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before  him, and she did not come.’ This very day the noble ladies of Persia and Media who have heard of the queen’s behavior will rebel against the king’s officials, and there will be no end of contempt and wrath!” (1:17-18)

It’s the dominos theory of sexual warfare: if one husband’s authority over his wife is flaunted, all husbands will lose their God-given powers over the weaker sex. And who could bear to live in a world like that?

King Ahasuerus accepts the wisdom of his macho advisors and deposes the queen. No one knows what happened to Vashti after that, although we fear the worst. Ahasuerus was not the kind of king who hesitated to take a life, or thousands of lives, at the flick of his royal finger. In Vashti’s case he was careful to make sure all seven of his male advisors were recorded by name (1:14) so history would acknowledge due process in her elimination, and he may have felt it was kinder to take her life than to send her demoted and shamed into the dung heaps of Persia.

Surely Vashti must have known she was taking an enormous personal risk by refusing a lawful order of the king, and there’s no evidence in Esther that anyone sympathized with her.

So what possessed her to say no when her whole life depended on saying yes?

For many scholars, Vashti’s refusal is an act of heroism, not arrogance or ambition.

The Rev. Martha M. Cruz (who, in the interest of full disclosure, is my spouse) holds that point of view.

“What was Vashti thinking?” I asked one night before lights-out (an aside to those who wonder what ecclesial pillow talk is like).

“What do you mean?”

“Why on earth would she refuse the king’s command to come to him when she knew what the consequences would be?”

There was a familiar pause as she quickly studied my face to see if I’d gone mad.

“Did you read it?” she asked, referring to the book of Esther.

“Yes, but …”

“Look, the king had been drinking with his minions for six months, showing off his gold and silver and marble pillars. Then when he was ‘merry with wine,’ he summons his beautiful trophy wife so he can show her off, too.”

“Yes …”

“Well, do you think she wants to be shown off like a slab of beef?”

“Well, no …”

“She was being summoned to voyeuristic abuse by the king and his drunken male friends, and she said, ‘No way!’”

I tried to think it through.

“But,” I said thoughtfully, “he asked her to wear her crown. He wasn’t asking her to pose naked. He asked her to wear the crown to introduce her as his queen …”

“It doesn’t matter if she was dressed or not. She was summoned by a powerful man to be exposed and humiliated in front of other powerful men. No woman wants that.”

“Of course,” I said. “But this was 450 B.C. The king’s power was absolute. In 450 B.C., Queen Vashti would not have been aware of any alternative but to do what the king said.” I stopped short of saying, “It’s good to be the king.”

Martha scoffed. “Do you think women were any happier to be exposed and humiliated 2500 years ago than they are now?”

I paused again to think it over. Of course, history’s most common thread is about powerless majorities being enslaved and humiliated by rich rulers, and I didn’t suppose one gender felt worse about it than the other.

But history does offer rare anecdotes of the powerless taking courageous stands against the powerful: Spartacus, the Zealots, the English peasant’s revolt of 1381, Joseph Cinqué, Nat Turner.  Maybe Queen Vashti should be added to that heroic list.

“I guess you’re right,” I said tentatively, still thinking it over. We fell asleep, as we often do, with a re-run of Law and Order: Criminal Intent on the bedroom television. I can’t remember what specific episode we were watching, but it had to have been a drama about powerful persons engaged in criminal behavior toward the weak. No doubt Detectives Eames and Goren brought the bad guys to justice in the final scenes, but it was a reminder that human conflict has changed little in 2500 years.

The conflict between King Ahasuerus and Queen Vashti was clearly sexually motivated, with the male seeking to fulfill his Freudian role of dominance and the woman raising an unexpected archetype of resistance. Later on in this same scripture it will be interesting to watch Queen Esther, Vashti’s lovely successor, use her exquisite beauty to charm the king into halting a plot by one of his ministers to exterminate the Jews of Persia. Whoever wrote the book of Esther – and I assume the author is male – obviously preferred Esther’s velvety approach to Vashti’s rebellion. In fact, no one in the narrative dares express support for Vashti – including she who benefitted most from her removal, namely, Queen Esther herself.

But the question remains about the appropriate relationship between the powerful and the powerless, as well as between women and men, both 2500 years ago and today.

We may excuse King Ahasuerus’ attitudes toward women as a Bronze Age fixation, but of course Martha is correct: even women who accepted cultural norms of low rank and submission were no more content to be objectified and humiliated then than they would be today. We tend to excuse unacceptable behavior when it conforms to historic or cultural norms, but in fact, Ahasuerus was as wide of the mark in 450 B.C. as he would be today.

This is an important lesson for the church. It’s not just the Roman Catholic hierarchy that has mishandled clergy sexual misconduct. All churches and traditions have sought to protect their professional leadership from criminal accusations on the grounds that if the clergy looks bad the church looks bad and the church’s Christian witness will suffer.

Of course it’s clergy misconduct that causes the church’s witness to suffer and efforts to cover it up make a bad situation worse. And no church that I have been aware of in the whole ecumenical movement has been entirely innocent of hiding terrible truths.

Sometimes sexual misconduct is explained away by cultural cliches, as in, “I’m a hugger,” or “I’m a toucher,” or “I grew up kissing strangers on the lips.” But that’s like excusing King Ahasuerus’ abuse of his queen on the grounds that “it’s good to be the king.”

Recently, ecumenical church bodies noticed a growing conflict in their meetings between persons who like to touch and be touched, and persons whose chests hurt if anyone stands too close to them.

The result is a brochure handed out by the National Council of Churches and Church World Service at every board and assembly meeting to explain to well-meaning Christians the truth about sexual harassment and abuse.

“Our diversity adds to the strength of our community; it is something that is cherished and celebrated,” the brochure advises.

“As we encounter one another’s differences, we cannot assume that our way of being and behaving is comfortable for every person. Sometimes our differences make it challenging to understand and communicate with one another, as well as respecting individual physical and sexual boundaries.”

As many church folks have discovered, it’s amazing how many people think a hand on the thigh or a pat on the rump is an essential component of any prayer circle.

“Behavior that has a sexual connotation, when unsolicited and unwanted, and / or repetitive, can be sexual harassment,” the brochure explains, perhaps too politely.

“Examples include: suggestive looks or comments, teasing or telling of jokes with sexual content, correspondence or calls of a sexual nature, inappropriate touching or closeness, pressure for unwanted personal or social engagement or activities with sexual overtones, or offers to use influence in return for sexual favors.

“In the end, harassment is not necessarily what is intended, but how that behavior and attitude impacts another’s well being defines harassment.”

The brochure encourages persons who feel that have been targets of sexual harassment to speak out.

“Gatherings of church bodies also need to be mindful of the presence of this kind of behavior. Within the sacred context of worship and Koinonia, sensitivity to and respect for each person is important.”

Queen Vashti is one of millions of women who were not treated with sensitivity and respect by one who held power over them.

The fact that Vashti took a stand when it would almost certainly result in her destruction is one of the most remarkable acts of courage in the Hebrew scriptures, equal to the courage of the queen who succeeded her.

We don’t know what finally happened to her, but we do know this: Queen Vashti set an example not only for her time but for all time. And we honor her as one who knew her true worth in God’s firmament – and showed us how to do the same.

That legacy is Vashti’s gift.

If she lived in our country today, she’d be a front runner for President of the United States.

August 29, 2016 – I’m indebted to my brother Larry for posting a memory that has long been a precious item in our family’s reliquary. It’s a picture of Joe DiMaggio taken by our mother, Mary.

If you missed him in Facebook, Larry writes:

My mother took this photo at Cooperstown Doubleday Field before or after the annual Hall of Fame game they used to play there. In those days, circa 1947, fans could go onto the field and mingle with the players. So she stopped Joe DiMaggio and asked for a photo and he obliged. My mother died when Christopher was 6 weeks old, and after her death I inherited this photo. Some time later, after (son) Patrick was born, I sent the photo to George Steinbrenner and explained how I got the photo, and how baseball might be the only way for my boys to connect with their grandmother. I asked him if he might be able to get Joe DiMaggio to sign it. It came back to me signed.

The anecdote raises my opinion of Steinbrenner, and it was also good to see the familiar photo after so many years.

Mom was a devoted baseball fan and Joe was the biggest star in her Yankee firmament. The picture of Joe was carefully preserved in her scrapbook as if it was an icon of a saint, and we would stare at it with worshipful curiosity.

Joe was retired by the time my sibs and I came along (we were in the Mantle generation), but we knew who he was. I am sure the first racy joke I ever heard was about Joe when he married Marilyn Monroe in 1954:

Q: What does Joe DiMaggio do when he hits a home run?
A: He stays home!

I didn’t really get it, and even now if falls short of actual humor. But all we 8 year olds pretended to laugh.

Our family’s approbation of Joe DiMaggio, illustrated so movingly by my brother, also helps me justify an incident that my spouse finds slightly appalling and at least one of my daughters regards as creepy.

In October 1992 I was in Washington, D.C. on church business and went to National Airport for my return flight. I always get to airports as early as possible and on this occasion I sat at an empty gate to read.

The adjacent gate was already full of passengers. As I scanned my book, a young ground agent escorted a gray-haired man with rounded shoulders to a seat directly in front of me. “I’ll come over to get you when it’s time to board,” she told the man, who nodded and smiled slightly, baring slightly irregular teeth.

The man was dressed in a brown varsity jacket and wore a baseball cap with a logo I didn’t recognize. He appeared tired. It took me a second or two to get my bearings, but I quickly realized the man was Joe DiMaggio.

Joe sat down, pulled out some reading material, and bowed his head to peruse it.

I knew very well that Joe was seeking the same thing I was: quiet privacy before a flight. Joe was reported to be unfriendly with pushy strangers so I quickly dismissed the thought of talking to him (although I did try to imagine myself sticking out my hand and asking, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?”). Instead I breathed silently through my mouth, staring at the back of Joe’s old gray head.

Within minutes, the gate agent next door announced the boarding of first class passengers and the young woman came over to escort him to the front of the line. Joe may have said thanks, or maybe he just nodded. He moved slowly and disappeared into the crowd.

As soon as he was gone I got up and sat in his seat. In his warmth! It was as close to Joe DiMaggio as I was ever going to get, and I remained in the chair until it was time to go to my gate.

I had sat in Joe DiMaggio’s human warmth! Not a lot of people ever did that, I thought. Marilyn, maybe, and maybe Lou Gehrig if they switched seats in the dugout. But I thought of my experience as highly unusual and slightly intimate. “Maybe you even picked up some of his epithelials,” said a friend when I told her the story today, just before she rolled her eyes.

I’m willing to concede that the experience is a little weird, but I’d like to think I was more respectful of the big guy than if I had interrupted his repose to shake his hand or ask for an autograph or remind him how a nation turned its lonely eyes to him. He never even knew I was there. But I had shared something every personal with him.

I figured out later that Joe DiMaggio was in Washington to participate in an Italian-American observance of the quincentennial of the landing of Columbus in the new world. I don’t know what he did during the event, but he looked as glad as I was to be going home.

The little game of musical chairs I played with Joltin’ Joe was not as significant as the generous gift he gave to my brother and his sons.

But both events were meaningful to my family because they were related, directly and indirectly, to our mother’s brief interaction with him on the green of Doubleday field.

Joe DiMaggio came in contact with millions of fans over his long career, and we were among the multitude.

And in very different but memorable ways, Mom, my brother, my nephews and I, experienced Joe DiMaggio’s special warmth.

By Philip E. Jenks

August 17, 2018 – Davy Crockett was born 232 years ago this Friday, August 17.

His birthday was the first historical date I committed to memory, thanks entirely to Walt Disney’s 1954 miniseries, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.

The historical Crockett was a bigger-than-life, self-aggrandizing windbag who lied about his exploits to make money and win votes. Disney’s Crockett was literally bigger. Fess Parker, at six feet-six, would have been a head taller than the coonskin Congressman. And a lot about the TV Davy was also fabricated.

If eight-year-old viewers didn’t already know it, it was easy to miss the fact that Davy died at the Alamo. The last scene shows Fess swinging his musket like a fan blade to propel dozens of hapless Mexicans like unfeathered shuttlecocks off the smoking ramparts. When I finally realized, at 9, that Davy died, it was my first sortie into historical reinterpretation. It was many years later that I realized Disney also hid the reality that the Mexican army was defending its legitimate territory against Texian interlopers.

Whatever its shortcomings, however, Disney’s reanimation of the Davy Crockett legend ignited my lifelong love of history. Most of the credit goes to actor Fess Parker, whose laconic portrayal made Davy seem both decent and heroic. Fess played less memorable roles when he was under contract to Disney, and viewers a few years younger than me knew him as TV’s Daniel Boone. I remained a fan of Fess until his death in 2010, and when his grandson created a Facebook account for him, I was one of the first to sign on. Read more about that here.

Between Davy and Dan’l, Fess made a career of creating images of historical figures that were more attractive than the real deals. I will go so far as to say Fess exceeded the accomplishments of his historic alter-egos. A Santa Barbara clergy friend of mine remembers him as a genial white-haired giant who stayed faithful to his wife, was generous to the Methodist Church (perhaps to encourage their acceptance of his wine producing business) and was a Ronald Reagan Republican (which, as we learned after the election of 2016, is not the worse thing you can be).

Davy, on the other hand, was a chronic self-promoter. He was a politician who believed elections are not lost by underestimating the intelligence of the American voter. His image as an Indian fighter, for example, was largely made up. During the famous Creek uprising of 1813 (immortalized in The Ballad of Davy Crockett), historian Michael Wallis said Davy hunted and foraged food for the troops and saw little action (David Crockett: The Lion of the West). Davy left for home before the Creek war was over and hired a substitute to fight for him.

Back home, Davy set his sights on politics in 1821. He entertained crowds with his tall tales and homespun humor and was elected to the Tennessee Legislature and later to Congress. In Congress he introduced a bill to close the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which he considered free education for the sons of the rich.

Davy’s real claim to historic immortality was being the sole member of the Tennessee delegation to vote against President Andrew Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act. This singular act of courage further damaged Davy’s dubious reputation as an Indian fighter and he was defeated for reelection in 1835.

From that time on, Davy Crockett devoted his time to promoting A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, Written by Himself, actually a collaboration with Kentucky Representative Thomas Chilton. It was during a book tour that newspapers quoted Davy’s famous message to his constituents, that “they might go to hell, and I would go to Texas.” That declaration sealed his fate. It seems he had every intention, as The Ballad of Davy Crockett puts it, of “follerin’ his legend into the West.”

According to historian Manley F. Cobia, Jr., Davy was followed by large crowds on his way to Texas and he regaled them with speeches about Washington politics and his commitment to Texas Independence. When he arrived in Nacogdoces, Texas, in January 1836, he enlisted as a Texian volunteer in exchange for a promise of 4600 acres of Texas land. Davy arrived at the Alamo in February, 1836.

As is now well known, the little San Antonio mission was placed under siege by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. All we really know is that when the smoke cleared, Davy was dead along with every other Texian. However, some accounts say a half dozen Texians surrendered to the Mexicans before the fighting was over. And some reports suggest Davy was among those who surrendered.

We will never know the truth, but I’m open to the possibility. Davy was in Texas to promote a book, himself, and his future as a landowner. He could have quickly assessed his situation to see how dumb it would be to die where he was not famous and in a place that had no apparent strategic importance. I can see how it made sense to surrender.

Unfortunately, Santa Anna was reportedly incensed that his “take no prisoners” order was ignored and he ordered their execution. All they had bought for themselves was a couple more hours of time.

That was 182 years ago last March. As it turns out, it doesn’t really matter how Davy died. There are only a handful of serious historians who know anything about his real life, much of which was camouflaged by fabrications and frontier humor.

For the rest of us, we have the Davy who was played so heroically by Fess, the Davy who believed in justice, who never gave up, who fought for freedom at the Alamo until his last righteous breath.

Okay. Maybe it didn’t really happen that way. But the fact is, in real history, it almost never happens that way.

But 232 years after his birth, we might still remember Davy with fondness for what we think he was and not for what he really was.

So I think we can be excused if we choose to celebrate his birthday with a healthy nip of Tennessee bourbon. Or four.

The more we nip, the less likely we will hear the real Davy bragging to us from his grave.

By Philip E.Jenks

July 27, 2016 – What I’m asking, not being skilled with social media abbreviations, is What Thorny Forebodings should we take seriously in the campaign of 2016?

My greatest foreboding is that a majority of U.S. voters may still be undismayed by Donald Trump. Perhaps Trumpites find it diverting that he openly brandishes his racism, xenophobia, ignorance of government, or bullying attitudes towards persons he regards as weak, including persons with disabilities. Today, for example, Mr. Trump announced his federal tax returns are none of the public’s business, and he called upon Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton’s email. I’m still waiting for an explosive media reaction to these offensive developments. But I understand why New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow seemed more resigned than angry: “This is outrageous,” Mr. Blow tweeted. “But go ahead America, vote for this charlatan …”

For me, a low spot of the week was the Trumpite response to a powerfully moving assertion by First Lady Michelle Obama that she wakes up every morning in a house built by slaves. Immediately, Trumpites accused her of being racially divisive and said the White House had been actually been built by white Europeans, free African Americans. And, well, okay, maybe, some slaves. But “slaves that worked there were well-fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government,” said Bill O’Reilly, whose view of slavery is more benign than Disney’s Song of the South.

The New York Times affirmed the accuracy of Ms. Obama’s statement, but Trumpites weren’t buying it. Like their namesake, Trumpites are too strident and too lazy to allow truth to erode their prejudices. The thorny foreboding that comes with all this is that Trumpites seem to regard all allusions to slavery, KKK lynchings, Jim Crow and “Black Lives Matter” as “racially divisive.”

Will the first move of President Trump’s Education department be to remove racially divisive topics like slavery from high school history books? Most of us got a lousy education about slavery anyway. Our textbooks told us slavery was an economic institution of the deep south where farmers depended on free labor to deliver cash crops. I felt utterly free of the moral stain of slavery because I grew up near Peterboro, N.Y., the home of abolitionist Garret Smith and an outpost of the underground railroad that escorted slaves to freedom.

But wait. Can it be that those of us with Yankee ancestors may have the sullied blood of slave owners coursing through our veins? Wendy Warren, author of New England Bound, Slavery and Colonization in Early America (Liveright Publishing), reveals that slavery flourished in the 17th century north, even at the hands of the Puritans who get a kind word in most history books as the gentle people who sought religious freedom in the new world and invented Thanksgiving. (We tend to forget that the Puritans were also Oliver Cromwell zealots who massacred Catholics in Ireland and whipped the skin off the backs of Baptists in Boston because they didn’t follow Puritan rules.)

In his review in the Times, Professor Christopher L. Brown of Columbia University writes that Warren’s book reveals slavery was every bit as inhuman in Puritan Boston as it was in Baptist Birmingham.

“New England Bound conveys the disorientation, the deprivation, the vulnerability, the occasional hunger and the profound isolation that defined the life of most African exiles in Puritan New England, where there was no plantation community,” Brown writes. “Though the surviving record allows limited access to their thoughts, Warren effectively evokes their feelings. Ripped from kin on the far side of the Atlantic, ‘dreaming of other people and other places,’ but unable to go home, the lost tried and sometimes succeeded in making meaningful connections with others suffering a similar fate. For this was the ordinary pain and sorrow of slave life in New England: Belonging to someone often meant having no one to belong to.”

Slavery sucked and any decent person would understand it sucked under any circumstances, whether slaves were beaten, raped, or “well-fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government.”

Trumpites worry that such self-evident truths are racially divisive, and Republicans have excoriated the Obamas for eight years of articulating truths their critics think sow hatred and division.

But clearly it’s ignorance, not truth, that sows hatred and division.

And my greatest foreboding is that American voters won’t catch on to the real spewer of hatred until it’s too late.

WTF?

By Philip E. Jenks

June 28, 2016 – This is the year I reach my sell-by date so my breakfast reading usually includes the New York Times obits.

This is not an opening for, “and if my name isn’t there I get up and begin the day.” My obit will never be in the New York Times. No one knows this better than a retired church journalist. I spent decades failing to convince Times editors that a particular dead Baptist or ecumenical leader was important enough for a coveted Times obit. My only consolation was that the dead luminary couldn’t complain.

Now the Times obit department – perhaps aware of the millions of Boomers reading over its shoulder – has expanded its scope to honor not only the recently deceased but to include nostalgic retrospectives on the long dead.

A recent “Not Forgotten” column included Dr. Jonas Salk, who died in June 1995.

For persons of a certain age, notably mine, there are few figures of the twentieth century who stand taller. He invented the first effective vaccine against infantile paralysis and, because of him, my parents could let my siblings and me swim in Eatonbrook Reservoir without worrying we’d die of polio or be crippled for life. That was a big load off everyone’s mind and in 1955 in the midst of the Cold War, one less big load was a big deal.

But I was nine then and skeptical that the cure was worth a painful needle jab in the arm. I have vivid memories of standing with my fellow fourth graders in long lines in the school gymnasium as Doc Matthias sat behind large vials of the vaccine, loading needles and inoculating 500 students, K-12. Standing beside Doc was the school nurse, using the favored psychology of the fifties to brace us for the pain: “None of the kindergartners cried,” she kept repeating. It wasn’t true, but it made our own tears more humiliating.

Twenty-one years later I shook Dr. Salk’s hand during an American Baptist biennial meeting in San Diego, Calif. Salk was there to present the Baptist Dahlberg Peace Award to Dr. Robert Hingson, inventor of the jet inoculator that had been used to administer polio vaccine to millions around the world.

Unlike the serious lab-coated Salk I knew from My Weekly Reader, staring dourly at his test tubes, he smiled genially. His thinning black hair, now white, had grown past his collar, and he seemed surprisingly animated for a laboratory squint.

I saw a potential story. As I leaned toward him he probably knew what I was going to ask. He grasped my shoulder and pulled me closer, still shaking my hand.

“Dr. Salk,” I said nervously, “Do you have time to sit with us in the newsroom for a few questions?”

He never stopped smiling. “Love to, of course, but, nah. Bobby and I are having lunch.” He winked, patted my arm, and disappeared into the Baptist crowd.

Of course it would have been intrusive to escort the great man to a dark newsroom, surround him with amateur photographers, and ask him impulsive questions, like, when did you first decide to cure polio.

But for me it was a Forrest Gump moment. Church communications jobs and small newspapers provide a lot of chances to stand on the sidelines as a Dali Lama, Jimmy Carter, Corretta King, or Jesse Jackson strolls past.

Salk strolled near me at a Baptist meeting in San Diego because we were both there to honor Robert Hingson, a Baptist layman whose invention of the jet inoculator “Peace Gun” led to the protection of millions of people around the world against many dread diseases, principally polio.

Unfortunately in the HIV era the “Peace Gun” became unsafe to use and Hingson saw his greatest accomplishment discarded.

But he, like Salk, was still a savior of millions.

Hingson died of Lou Gehrig’s disease in 1996. He was another great Baptist figure given short shrift by the New York Times obit editors.

But Robert Hingson, like Jonas Salk, is one of many “Not Forgotten” figures of our age who changed our world forever. And I hope to read more about him in a future breakfast time perusal of the obits.

My own “Not Forgotten” follows.

By Philip E. Jenks

June 28, 2016. When Dr. Robert E. Hingson drove from his home in Georgia to visit the American Baptist national offices in 1987, he filled the trunk of his car with walnuts. He handed them out to everyone he saw, praising their health benefits and bragging about the special deliciousness of this particular Georgia variety.

Hingson, the inventor of the jet inoculator that helped protect millions throughout the world from dread diseases like small pox and polio, had accepted my invitation for an interview for an article in The American Baptist Magazine.

Naturally, I expected to fly down to Georgia to see him, but Hingson insisted on driving up himself. He said he hadn’t seen the circular offices of American Baptist Churches USA in years, and he was eager to see his old friend Chester J. Jump, Jr., who had been head of the American Baptist International Ministries.

He was probably the lowest-maintenance celebrity ever to visit the ABC offices. He turned down offers for rides, found his way to his hotel room, and spent hours talking with the communication staff.

He never stopped smiling. He had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease and seemed to be observing the progress of his illness with cool detachment. At one point he picked up the jet inoculator to show us how it worked. “Look,” he said. “I can’t move my index finger anymore. Last week I could. That’s interesting.” Hingson died of the disease in October 1996.

In his last decade, many of Hingson’s Baptist friends thought the millions of lives he had helped save made him an appropriate candidate for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Each year we wrote letters to the Nobel committee and solicited the support of other Laureates, but it never happened.

Tragically, the jet inoculator – so useful for protecting millions from scores of epidemic diseases – could not be prevented from inadvertently passing along the HIV virus. The tool – Hingson liked to call it “the peace gun” – was quickly abandoned around the world.

Still, it helped save millions while it was used. Hingson did not win the Nobel Prize, and I didn’t even think his obituary in the Times did him justice.

It can’t be denied that he is one of the great pioneers of modern medicine. In 1987, we tried to tell his story in such a way as to capture both his scientific inventiveness and deep Christian faith.

Populism is a political position that holds that the virtuous citizens are being mistreated by a small circle of elites, who can be overthrown if the people recognize the danger and work together. The elites are depicted as trampling in illegitimate fashion upon the rights, values, and voice of the legitimate people.

By Philip E. Jenks

June 26, 2016 – The Princeton definition of populism is as good as any. It makes populist politicians seem heroic, and some are. But for every William Jennings Bryan in U.S. history there have been ten Huey Longs. For every Bernie Sanders there have been too many George Wallaces.

And don’t get me started on historic populists like Mussolini, who looks a lot like Donald Trump shorn of his unruly weave. The Donald hardly discourages the resemblance when he frowns, folds his arms, and struts across the stage.

This week, at home and abroad, populist sentiments have been exposed for what they too often are: xenophobia and racism.

In the U.S., so-called populists cheered the Supreme Court 4-4 vote that let stand a lower court ruling that President Obama’s executive intervention to protect undocumented residents was unconstitutional. And in the mother country, Brits voted to withdraw from the European Union, in part because many hoped to stem the flow of immigrants onto their shores.

Two highly visible populist leaders – the coiffure twins Donald Trump of the U.S. and Boris Johnson of the U.K. – proclaimed each event a victory for virtuous citizens over the elite. But it would be hard to make a case that either the Supreme Court impasse or BREXIT was a victory for the good guys. It seems clearer they were a victory of oppressive majorities who fear “the others” – anyone not like them.

In the U.S., white chauvinism has reached new heights. Racist opposition to an African American president has been piously disguised in Congress as politics as usual, and Republicans in a gerrymander-guaranteed majority know they have the support of voters who are uncomfortable with immigrants, Muslims, persons living in poverty, persons of color, and – especially – undocumented residents.

That sounds like populism turned upside down. A small circle of elites is coalescing to keep innocent and often productive residents out of their backyards.

If you don’t understand why the U.S. Supreme Court non-decision was a calamity for millions living in the U.S., you may be part of that elite circle. Jorge Ramos, Univision’s newscaster and moral voice, used a Facebook video to explain it.

“It’s a real tragedy for many families.” He said. “They don’t see the politics. Tonight parents will be having that talk with their kids … ‘I might be deported.’ They were waiting for this day to tell them ‘tomorrow when I go to work you can be sure I’ll be back.’ But tomorrow when they go to work they won’t be able to say that.”

Ramos didn’t have to remind his Latino listeners that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have rounded up and deported thousands of undocumented residents of the U.S. There are hundreds of stories of children born in the U.S. who came home after school and found their undocumented parents missing. This cruel and arbitrary separation of families is one of the travesties President Obama was trying to prevent when he issued orders to protect hard-working, law-abiding immigrants and to protect them with a legal process for to achieve permanent residence status and citizenship. For many that’s a moral issue that transcends the political question of how far the president’s authority extends.

The President issued his orders because the Republican majority in Congress preferred to keep 11-million residents of the U.S. living in excruciating limbo. And some Republicans, including the party’s presumed standard-bearer, think that, ideally, the 11-million should be swept up in an unprecedented pogrom and expelled.

These Republicans are gambling that immigration is not the greatest concern of Latino voters, and that most Latinos are more interested in wages and jobs. But Ramos, with ominous gentleness, warns Republicans they are wrong.

“If you say I’m going to give you jobs but I’m going to deport your mother and your father and your neighbor and your friends,” Ramos says on Facebook, “it’s going to be a little difficult to get the Latino vote.”

Meanwhile, back in the Motherland, the national and international repercussions to BREXIT have been worse than expected. One Scot, calling Brian Lehrer’s radio program on WNYC in New York Friday, declared the vote to be “Britain’s greatest foreign policy blunder since Munich.”

The crux of the matter can be found in the same populist trends that are dominating the United States: xenophobia and racism.

For Americans who weren’t carefully following the BREXIT debate before last Thursday, the BBC has compiled a helpful primer listing eight reasons “leave” attracted more votes than “remain.”

To no one’s surprise, the BBC said the debate got bogged down in the public irritation with experts who said economy would tank if Britain exited, boredom with the lackluster Labour Party and its advocacy of “remain,” disenchantment with Tory Prime Minister David Cameron and his pleas to stay in the Union, and the nostalgia of millions of older voters for England’s finest hours, which they somehow believe had been accomplished without European help.

Too, the enthusiastic support for“leave” by former London Mayor Boris Johnson “put rocket boosters on the campaign,” the BBC said. Johnson is presumed to be a leading candidate for Prime Minister in the wake of Cameron’s announced resignation. But a big reason“leave” won was the immigration issue raised by the U.K. Independence Party.

The BBC reported: “The issue fed into wider questions of national and cultural identity, which suited Leave’s message – particularly to lower income voters.

“The result suggested that concerns about levels of migration into the U.K. over the past 10 years, their impact on society, and what might happen in the next 20 years were more widely felt and ran even deeper than people had suspected,” said the BBC.

Simply put, voters supported Britain’s exit from the Union because they believed the U.K. could not control the number of immigrants the European Union was forcing into their country. By the time the votes were counted, BREXIT had become another populist irony in which the elite and fearful banned together for protection against the weak and vulnerable.

Needless to say, most churches and religious institutions urge governments and their constituents to reconnect with God’s commandment to love one’s neighbors and treat all of them – regardless of religion, race, class, or national background – as we ourselves want to be treated. Jesus, Hillel, Mohammed, Buddha and other religious leaders proclaimed that as the greatest commandment. Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and many other faith groups advocate immigration reform.

One would think this Godly commitment to the weak and downtrodden would form the very heart of populism in our greedy and perilous world. Instead, it is the populists themselves who believe their self-interests must be defended, no matter how perilous they make life for the weak.

As the U.S. and the U.K. prepare for their next elections, one can only hope that a more traditional populism will emerge – a populism in which the people will remember that best interests lie in throwing open their doors to all persons, no matter where they are from or what kind of papers they are carrying.

And perhaps it’s also worth remembering that this kind of populism is not the exclusive property of Republicans or Democrats, or Labour and Tories. Nearly seventy-five years ago, the leading populist in the world was a Presbyterian Republican named – don’t laugh – John Foster Dulles.

When the U.S. entered World War II, Dulles chaired the U.S. Federal Council of Churches Commission for a Just and Durable Peace to identify ways of preventing future wars. The commission was so radical in its scope that even the liberal New York Times condemned it.

Dulles and his fellow commissioners recommended the formation of a United Nations, international control of all armies and navies, a universal system of money to prevent inflation and deflation, and a democratically controlled international bank.

Most surprising, the commission called for “worldwide freedom of immigration.”

Of course the commission’s recommendations were ignored and Dulles spent his remaining years atoning for his radical phase by serving as President Eisenhower’s saber-rattling secretary of state.

But it’s diverting to imagine how life would be different now if the world had listened to Dulles and his colleagues. Too much has happened in world history for it to make sense to restudy the commission’s program for a just and durable peace to see if any part of it might still work.

But I hope politicians in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere will not reject out of hand the benevolent spirit of the commission’s radical proposals, especially its call for worldwide freedom of immigration.

It’s ironic and even a little sad that guys like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are claiming populist credibility by leading their minions to deny liberty and freedom of movement to immigrants and others who need freedom the most.

But it’s amusing, if not a little bizarre, that J. Foster “Brinksmanship” Dulles may also be remembered as a pinstripe populist long after The Donald and The Boris are forgotten .

The moral of the story, perhaps, is that there’s a lot to snicker at in wanna-be populism.

But at least Foster Dulles, with his Presbyterian humorlessness, scowls, and frowns, understood populism was about treating his neighbors with compassion and justice no matter who they are or where they are from.

Unfortunately, today’s so-called populists are still a long way from that revelation. May the scales fall from their eyes before they tear our nations apart.

See http://bit.ly/yahootudeandguns

“One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power.” – Bill Moyers

I hesitate to jump on the Stop Trump bandwagon now. Polls indicate 70 percent of the people don’t like him, and I hate to look like I’m susceptible to peer pressure.

Possibly my hesitation grew out of 30 years of communicating for church and ecumenical organizations whose tax-exempt status required we keep our political views to ourselves.

But as New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow said on his Facebook video last week, Trump has gotten on my last nerve.

As a mere voter, I can drop the guise of thoughtful neutrality. I have never liked Trump, even when he appeared to be – In the words of Times columnist Maureen Dowd, a “braggadocious but benign celebrity.” I thought the New York Daily News got it right last year when Trump said he would run for the highest office in the land: “CLOWN RUNS FOR PREZ.”

The Daily News headlines also summed up why voters would laugh at the Donald. “Insults Mexicans.” “Vows border wall.” “’I’ll be greatest.’” “Ad-libs circus speech to formally announce.”

But as the 2016 campaign commenced and Trump began winning Republican primaries, I stopped chortling.

What on earth was happening? Everything about the campaign defied logic. Even Nate Silver, the pollster known for his uncannily accurate predictions of the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, has been consistently wrong this year. Silver and other pollsters failed to predict Donald Trump’s rise and they blame the vastly underestimated anger of voters, the unforeseen weakness of the Republican National Committee, and the rapaciousness of media to boost ratings by focusing on the Donald’s bloviating charisma.

Pollsters also did poorly on the Democratic side, failing to anticipate Bernie Sanders’ strong showing over long-time front-runner Hillary Clinton. My friend Kurt Meyer, a Democratic leader in Iowa, was among the first to notice Bernie’s strength and signaled the Clinton campaign, “Objects in the rearview mirror may be closer than they look.”

The media distorted the true nature of the Democratic campaign by concentrating on Clinton’s use of private email when she was secretary of state, and by resurrecting long debunked rumors of her past life without checking their veracity on scopes.com. The media have also tended to let Sanders slide by not pressing him to explain where he would get the trillions of dollars necessary to implement his proposals, and by not examining how comfortable the electorate would be with an avowedly socialist president.

But it is the Trump campaign that raises the hackles of this old church journalist.

Earlier this year I didn’t worry about Trump’s more inexplicable proposals, such as building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, expelling 11 million undocumented aliens from the U.S., barring the entry of Muslims, punishing women who have abortions, or using tactical nuclear weapons to combat ISIS. I didn’t worry because I figured the American people would never allow him to get away with it.

In the weeks since he clinched the GOP nomination, Trump showed little sign of moderating his views. He suggested a judge assigned to a case involving Trump University should be disqualified because he is of Mexican descent. And following the terror assault on LGBT persons in a nightclub in Florida, he renewed his call to ban Muslims from the U.S. and accused President Obama of being somehow responsible for the attack.

Why didn’t American primary voters stop Trump when they had a chance?

Charles M. Blow has a theory. Millions of Americans struggle to hide that racist bone they claim they don’t have in their bodies and Trump has given them the opportunity let it dangle. Trump’s unabashedly racist statements give racists a comfortable place to stand, and they have come out of the closet in droves. “(Trump) is a racist,” Blow insists in a recent Facebook video. “He’s a sexist. He’s a nativist. He discriminates on the basis of religion and ethnicity … This man is the presumptive nominee of a major party in America and this is because Republicans have been cowards about dealing with the poison that they fully know is in their midst.”

Republican leaders have done little to disguise their racism. Some of their resistance to an African American president, such as their opposition to the Affordable Care Act, might have been politics as usual. But their unrelenting, systematic contempt for Obama – most recently manifest by their refusal to acknowledge the President’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court – ensues because they know the closet racists in their base will reward their recalcitrance. One can almost hear echoes of Randy Newman’s satirical song from the 2012 campaign, “I’m Dreaming of a White President.”

Among the more sobering things about Trump are his vainglorious efforts to wrap his ideas in the arms of faith by pursuing the votes of Christian evangelicals.

Some evangelicals have returned that embrace, including two scions of evangelical doughtiness, Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Billy Graham’s son Franklin. But that doesn’t mean most evangelicals support Trump and, as both Christianity Today and Atlantic magazines have pointed out, most don’t. They are as afraid of his ideas as most other thinking persons of faith.

In one of the lowlights of the GOP debates, Trump refused to recite a single bible passage, leaving the impression he had no memory verses locked in his curiously coifed head.

That is perfectly understandable. What could be more unpleasant for a rich man than an immersion in Scripture? The bible offers no comfort to the rich.  Jesus himself routinely lambasted persons of wealth. Especially unpleasant for the high-net-worth few is the anecdote of the rich man who basks in luxury, scarcely noticing the wretched beggar who is starving and dying of psoriatic ulcers beneath his table. The beggar dies and goes to heaven, while the rich man was consigned to the torments of hell. (Luke 16:19-31).

Then there the story of the rich young man who abandoned Jesus when he was told to sell all he had and give the proceeds to the poor. (Matthew 19:21)

And the best-known anecdote is Jesus’ oft-quoted remark that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven. (Mark 10:24).

For many, that’s very bad news. Bad news for Trump. Bad news for the Koch brothers. Bad news for Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Franklin Graham. And bad news for most of us. Because millions of us who fall far short of the celebrated one percent are nevertheless richer than Luke’s rich man could possibly imagine. Worse, most of us in that category are as indifferent to the 45 million U.S. residents who live below the poverty line as the rich man was indifferent to Lazarus.

It is astonishing that Trump, who routinely boasts of his fortune and interprets it as God’s favor on him, shows little evidence he is concerned about persons living in poverty, or has empathy for undocumented residents, Muslims, unmarried pregnant teenagers, or the millions of innocents who would be collateral damage in the wars he proposals.

My guess is that churchy stuff bores the Donald and he will do anything to keep it at a distance, even write a check. The late Arie Brouwer, former general secretary of both the National Council of Churches and the Reformed Church in America (RCA), once told me this story about Trump:

Some time ago, the Reformed Church was in the midst of a major capital funds campaign.

Trump was known to attend worship services at Marble Collegiate Church in New York, the RCA church where Norman Vincent Peale had been pastor. The RCA leaders speculated Trump might be a good bet for a seven-figure gift to the campaign. They met with Trump in his Manhattan office and carefully laid out the good things that could happen if the campaign reached its goal. Trump listened politely, occasionally checking his watch, but rose from his desk before the sales pitch had been completed. He pulled out his checkbook, wrote out a check for $75,000, and escorted the group out of his office.

That’s a generous gift by any calculation, but the leaders were deeply disappointed. Arie said he had dozens of buttons created with the words, “I Trumped Trump.” The buttons were to be pinned to the lapels of anyone who gave more than $75,001.

The story suggests a breakdown of communication on both sides. I don’t know if the buttons helped raise money, but they surely slammed shut the door between Trump and his church.

One can only wish that Trump had better access to spiritual direction. If only he was indeed the religious man he claims to be. I would welcome evidence that he heard the words of Jesus, paraphrased by many other faith leaders including Hillel, Buddha, and Mohammed, to assert God’s greatest commandment to humankind: love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

As one reads through Trump’s political proposals, it appears he thinks the greatest commandment reads like this: Never get closer to God than oblique references to “the man upstairs,” and never let your neighbor get in your way.

If Trump, the media, and the voting public pursue the designs Trump exemplifies, I fear the “making American Great Again” balloon will swiftly collapse. We will become a nation isolated from the rest of the world, feared and scorned, surrounded by walls, and hampered by a citizenry that fears anyone who is different from them. The Trump formula for greatness is a recipe for international decline, internal division, and encroaching weakness.

If voters decide to pursue the course Mr. Trump has set, I fear we may find ourselves living in a nation – and in a world – where the spiritual guidelines of Jesus, Hillel, Muhammad, and Buddha will be distorted beyond recognition. And soon the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 will evolve to create a more comfortable tent for Trump supporters:

Happy are the rich, for their earthly kingdoms will inspire the poor to greater diligence.

Happy are the comfortable, for their luxury can be a constant source of consolation.

Happy are the aggressively assertive, for few will dare deny them anything.

Happy are those who hunger and thirst for self-aggrandizement, for they will always be sated.

Happy are those who show no mercy to foes and critics, for they will be infinitely satisfied by their conquests.

Happy are the jaded and pragmatic, for God prefers those who help themselves.

Happy are those who decry appeasement and diplomacy, for God smiles on the strong.

Happy are those who smite their critics and lay waste to their opponents, for God loves a winner.

Let’s get physical, physical
I wanna get physical, let’s get into physical
Let me hear your body talk, your body talk
Let me hear your body talk*

By Philip E. Jenks

New York, June 17, 2016 – The New York Times reported today that the niece of Fulton J. Sheen has filed suit in the New York Supreme Court to compel St. Patrick’s Cathedral to disentomb the body of Fulton J. Sheen so it can be moved to Peoria, Ill., the city of his birth.

Earlier it was reported that Sheen’s beatification – the final step before sainthood – would be delayed because Catholic hierarchs can’t agree where his body should be end up.

For many non-Catholics, this dispute over a body seems as unseemly as the revelation that Masterpiece Theatre host Alistair Cooke’s bones had been cut from his body by rogue morticians and sold for transplant tissue.

For many Catholics, the dispute over Sheen’s body is more ethereal. It means the late, beloved television preacher will have to wait for the official recognition that he is doing saintly things in heaven along with newly installed Saints Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II.

For Christians with a broader view of sainthood, the dispute makes little sense. Baptists and other sects regard a saint as anyone who receives Jesus Christ by faith.

One does not even have to be dead to qualify.  The Apostle Paul, himself long recognized by the Catholic Church as an official saint, agreed. To Paul a saint was any member of the body of Christ, quick or dead. Note, for example, his salutation to the church at Corinth, “to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (I Corinthians 1:2).”

That should settle it for Saint Fulton of Peoria. In his lifetime, he not only accepted Jesus in faith; he also embarked on a career that led millions to the same decision.

For those of us of a certain age (Boomers in our fifties and sixties), Sheen was one of the first stars of 1950s television. His show Life is Worth Living (1951 to 1957) sometimes attracted more viewers than “Mr. Television,” Milton Berle, who hosted the first nationally broadcast variety show on the small screen. Berle liked to be called “Uncle Milty,” and soon Sheen’s fans were calling him “Uncle Fulty.”

I was a devoted fan of both Milty and Fulty. I remember one show in which Sheen read a letter from a nine-year-old (someone my age) who expressed fondness for the bishop’s skullcap. Sheen removed the cap from his head and announced he would send it to the child. I was thrilled by Sheen’s recognition of the kids in his audience. And a little jealous that I didn’t think to ask for his hat.

[For younger readers who have never heard of Sheen, there are dozens of examples of his television preaching on YouTube. Here’s an example.]

In 1957, a spiteful New York Cardinal Francis Spellman forced Life is Worth Living off the air. Yet Sheen always spoke forgivingly of Spellman, which is a collateral sign of his saintliness. And to be sure, Sheen’s saintly career abounded as director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, bishop of Rochester, N.Y., and titular bishop of Neoportus (New Port, Wales).

I shook Sheen’s hand in October 1967 when I was in Rome attending an Air Force religious retreat. Pope Paul VI (now beatified but until recently stuck in the airless anteroom of indecision while the church determined his saintliness) was hosting Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in a historic confab. Church hierarchs and celebrities came from all over the world to watch.  We Americans standing in St. Peters immediately recognized Fulton Sheen in the procession. Uncle Fulty, his white hair set off by his purple cap, reached out to our extended hands, smiling, winking, repeating, “Hi, ya, how are ya, hi, ya.” His charisma was irresistible.

Sheen died in 1979 and, despite his stated wishes to be buried in Calvary Cemetery Queens, he was entombed in a crypt at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan.  And so far Sheen has remained undisturbed, or his bones have.

Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of Sheen’s hometown of Peoria, Ill., has asked New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan to fulfill a verbal promise by his predecessor to send the bones to Peoria for burial. Jenky apparently foresees great possibilities for the consecrated body as a spiritual attraction for midwest pilgrims.

But Cardinal Dolan, a lifelong admirer of Sheen, has said no way. The bones will remain in New York City where Sheen spent a large part of his life. The impasse – for reasons that mystify non-Catholics – has halted the canonization process.

What, we non-liturgical Christians ask around our communion tables, slurping our Welches and noshing neat squares of white bread, does a corpse have to do with sainthood? Recognizing that the road to Catholic sainthood doesn’t always translate well within the Protestant yahootude, the New York Times  explained that this is not an unprecedented stalemate. “To be sure,” wrote the Times’ Sharon Otterman, “disputes over remains of saints are nothing new in the Roman Catholic Church, and in the past the resolution has sometimes been to divide the body. St. Catherine of Siena is enshrined in Rome, but her head is revered in a basilica in Siena, Italy. St. Francis Xavier, the 16th-century missionary, is entombed in Goa, India, but his right arm is in Rome, in a reliquary at the Church of the Gesu.”

But that macabre solution seems out of the question for Sheen, and the late archbishop remains in that stale anteroom of indecision along with Pope Paul VI and millions of other wannabees awaiting admission to the manse of saints.

That seems very sad, unless you look at it from the point of view of millions of Protestants who knew they were saints as soon as they reached out in faith to Jesus.

And – if I can do so without offending millions of faithful Catholics who embrace the uncompromising requirements for sainthood that have been followed for centuries – perhaps I can offer a few words of comfort.

Saint Fulton of Peoria is not interred with his moldering bones. He has long since flown free to the saintly realm God arranged for him when he first encountered Jesus.

And with very little effort, I can imagine him chatting daily with some of the saints I knew so well: Saints Bertha and Goldie of Oneonta and Saint Doris of Sacketts Harbor, Saints Mary and Elmore of Morrisville, and Santo Beny de la Habana.

The fortunate thing for these saints is that they did not have to pass an unreasonably strident inquisition to prove their saintliness. I knew them well enough to doubt most of them could have advanced past the first step.

But I also know they joined the throng of saints the moment they reached out in faith to Jesus. It was at that moment they walked through the door into the bright light and pure air enjoyed by all God’s saints.

And – bones or no bones – it is in that magnificent mansion that Saint Fulton dwells, too. Now and forever.

* 1981 hit by Olivia Newton-John, written by Terry Shaddick and Stephen Alan Kipner.