12 February, 2008

• Back to Foucault, while I await my procedure… #
• Procedure is over. Sedation is nice right now ! #

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Despite my absence from the church or functioning in a pastoral capacity, I am well aware of the pulse of women and their contribution.  I have been moved deeply by the feminist theological movement.  Therefore, the iRobyn site extends sympathy to the BVM Community on the death of their well-respected feminist theologian Anne Carr.I received the following from WATER/Mary Hunt:

She passed away this week in her apartment in Chicago. Anne Carr was Professor Emerita at the Divinity School and the College of the University of Chicago. She was a pioneer in feminist theology whose books include TRANSFORMING GRACE: CHRISTIAN TRADITION AND WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE, several issues of Concilium focused on women, as well as work on Karl Rahner and Thomas Merton. She received the 2007 Ann O’Hara Graff Memorial Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America. She was among those progressive Catholic women theologians who made their mark outside of Catholic institutions because of Vatican discrimination. May her work endure in future generations of feminist scholars.  

Following is information on the services planned for this week in Chicago. 

• Wake: Thursday, February 14, 2:00 pm - 8:00 pm
• Prayer Service: 6:00 pmSt. Thomas the Apostle Church5472 S. Kimbark Ave. (55th and Kimbark)Chicago
• Funeral: Friday, February 15, 11:00 am(viewing 9:00 am - 10:45 am)St. Thomas the Apostle Church
• Followed by burial: Queen of Heaven Cemetery Hillside

Expressions of sympathy may be directed to Anne’s sisters:

• Jeanne Horan111 Acacia Dr. #307 Indian Head Park, IL 60525
• Pat and Dick Zeiler525 N. Edgewood Ave. La Grange Park, IL 60526

Supporting my favorite MPP…I have appreciated the public theology of Cheri and continue to learn about the unification of theology, politics, and life…read on…

MPP DiNOVO TAKES ACTION TO END CRIMINAL INTEREST RATES CHARGED BY PAYDAY LENDERS

QUEEN’S PARK – NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo in a press conference today, announced plans to re-introduce a Private Members Bill titled The Payday Loans Act, 2008 that governs payday loans by imposing licensing requirements and setting a cap on interest rates. DiNovo introduced the same bill last year.

“The McGuinty Government failed to do anything on payday lenders in their last term,” said DiNovo. “That’s why I am going to table this Bill again as soon as the house sits in March.” Research shows that interest rates by payday loan operations, when extrapolated to annual levels, range between 390 and 891 per cent or more. DiNovo’s Payday Loans Act will limit the annual interest rate on payday loans to 35 per cent and require licensing in the industry.

“This legislation will stop predatory lending practices that are detrimental for communities, because they attract some of the most vulnerable individuals to enter into a vicious cycle of debt,” said DiNovo. As stated in United Way’s report released in November 2007, the number of payday loan and cheque cashing outlets in the GTA alone are up from 39 in 1995 to 317 in 2007. The majority of these payday lending and cheque cashing outlets are located in low-income, family areas. “This government continues to allow payday loan companies to take advantage of poor communities,” said DiNovo. “I hope that the McGuinty Government will act on these criminal practices and pass my Bill in March.”

DiNovo was joined at the press conference by James Wardlaw and Edward Lanz, representatives from ACORN.

From a TORONTO STAR editorial
Time to curb payday lenders
Low-income earners who live from paycheque to paycheque have few places to turn when they hit a financial rough patch. Major banks have pulled out of many poor neighbourhoods, and those that remain are often reluctant to lend to customers with unsteady incomes and spotty credit histories. …On the opposition side, NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo is doing her best to make sure the issue stays at the top of the agenda by announcing this week that, when the Legislature resumes sitting next month, she plans to reintroduce a private member’s bill that would establish a licensing regime and cap annual interest rates at 35 per cent. That could put them out of business. In Quebec, which already has a 35 per cent interest ceiling, there are no legal payday lenders, according to an Ontario government consultation paper released last year. “To be biblical about it, this is chasing the money lenders out of Ontario, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” says DiNovo, a United Church minister, who adds that clamping down on payday lending “is simply an ethical call.”

Removing Visa Requirements for Polish Visitors to Canada

The Canadian Polish Congress has spent the last 10 years meeting with government officials and Ministers of Immigration to have the Visa requirements removed from Polish citizens visiting Canada.

In 2007 Members of the Congress and Polonia met with numerous Members of Parliament. They need one last petition to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to finally remove the Visa requirements this spring 2008.

The City of Toronto and the Toronto-Warsaw Friendship Committee have launched a postcard campaign for people to mail to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The Congress has also set up an electronic petition. To lend your support please visit to the following link: www.polishcongress.ca.

I’m consistently surprised at the business model, capitalism, and the structures of the machine world.  There was a moment last week when I thought to myself:  is the process of performance evaluation rooted in a metanarrative of alienation?

Departing from a process-oriented model of evaluation, my job is now subject to my performance and productivity–part and parcel to the capitalist model.  I am, again, consistently surprised at the process of assimilation and alienation.  These experiences, to which I am subject, give me adequate fodder for cultural analysis regarding the machine world

Perhaps Lyotard would give us some insight?

Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.  This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences:  but that progress in turn presupposes it.  To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it.  The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements–narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on [...] Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside? - Jean-Francois Lyotard^[2]