In the News
Blue Sky Optimism by ardvorak79
A few things worth reading in the Buffalo News:
Colin Dabkowski has quickly become a must-read every Sunday. His columns are direct, pithy, and insightful. This week, he weighs in on the city’s revival of its public arts program.
Although I’m not a huge fan of nostalgia, I think that Bruce Andriatch’s look back at his time at a defunct Olean-area restaurant and hotel is poignant and interesting.
The News’ endorsements for the upcoming school board election are notable for being exclusively Caucasian in a predominately African-American district. It would seem that there will be a lot of whitesplaining going on over the next year. But understand that when Paladino’s agenda is unsuccessful, he’s going to have to own that and he won’t have any “sisterhood” to blame anymore.
Buffalo’s own news historian guru, Steve Cichon, has begun curating the “BN Chronicles”, highlighting interesting stories from the News’ archives. Nestled between stories detailing America’s intervention in the Mexican Revolution, there’s this 1969 story about moving the Williamsville toll back past the Transit exit (never happened, we’re still arguing about it), a Buffalo Bill selling cars during the off-season, a story about fledgling gay rights in 1984, and a 1969 piece about “high speed rail”.
Sacred Heart Academy refused to print an alumna’s same-sex marriage announcement in its alumni periodical. The woman in charge of the magazine expressed that she was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“I’m very sorry that we can’t publish your pictures and your good news in the Cordecho,” Sister Edith Wyss wrote. “We had a similar request several years ago and we did publish that announcement of the marriage of an alum to her partner. We did expect some negative response and we got some.
“However some readers of the Cordecho also contacted the Diocese of Buffalo. The bishop sent a diocesan official to meet with us at SHA to make sure that we understood what we had done,” Wyss wrote. “In their view, we were publicly supporting same-sex marriage. In our view, we were supporting our alumnae.”
The bottom line, according to Wyss, was that the Cordecho – published three times a year in winter, spring and fall – could not again print news or photos related to same-sex marriage.
One person posted a comment on my Facebook wall, indicating that Nardin has no problem announcing alums’ same-sex marriages, so all of this is a bit odd. But then, read what Buffalo’s bishop has to say:
“I am grateful that the leadership of Sacred Heart Academy has done the right thing and has not compromised its Catholic mission and values. While Sacred Heart is not a diocesan school, it is a Catholic school within the diocese, and I have responsibility for Catholic identity there and in every Catholic school, diocesan or not.”
Yet Pope Francis famously said, “[i]f someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” While not a full-throated endorsement of same-sex marriage, it’s certainly more loving and tolerant than what Buffalo’s bishop has to say.
Sacred Heart Academy reportedly has no problem cashing homosexual students’ and alumnae’s checks.
“But understand that when Paladino’s agenda is unsuccessful, he’s going to have to own that and he won’t have any “sisterhood” to blame anymore.” I fundamentally disagree, as that Carl Paladino has never owned a mistake in his entire life, nor will he. With his new set of cronies in place, it will be the remaining obstructionists’ fault when his agenda fails again, followed by the unions, followed by whatever other straw men he can come up with.
Once again I’ll be ignoring the News school board endorsements. What else is new????
Meh. I always choose candidates based on substance and issues without regard to skin color. Sometimes my choices happen to be African-American – as with Byron Brown over Sergio Rodriguez last year, and over Mickey Kearns previously – not even a close call either time. Other times my choices happen to be not African-American, as with this school board election.
My three choices don’t match that of the Buffalo News editorial, but since skin color had no bearing on my choices, it’d be hypocritical for me to say theirs are notable due to skin color.
It’s similar to how I wouldn’t think any of your very strident past endorsements against Byron Brown who happens to be African-American were notable due to his skin color.
Editorial aside, the Buffalo News has been doing good reporting about candidate issue positions. This table is very informative, along with candidate discussions that follow.
http://projects.buffalonews.com/buffalo-boe/index.html
I think that by basically forbidding Sacred Heart to print news of same-sex marriages, the Diocese is exercising too much control. I have to wonder if they will also print news of marriages that involve divorcees, or of alumnae having children out of wedlock. And, as Alan pointed out, the Diocese certainly doesn’t forbid Sacred Heart from cashing checks drawn against an account with the names of two women on it. I don’t think that merely printing the news of an alumna’s marriage to another woman is condoning anything. The purpose of features like that is to simply let everyone know what their classmates are up to. The readers of Cordecho are free to pass judgement themselves once they read the news.
So they published the announcement several years ago and were confronted by people who probably sent larger checks than the ones with two female names on it. And caved. Sounds like the Catholic church doing what it always does.
It seems to me that Paladino’s agenda has shined a light on a school board that has operated in the dark for far too long.