Destructive and out-of-date
Eighty years ago, my pretty young aunt fell in love with her Prince Charming, a tall, handsome, charismatic fellow on Chicago’s North Side. Alas, they couldn’t follow a conventional route to happily ever after because of one roadblock; Prince Charming was a priest at her local parish. So they did as other star-crossed lovers in those days: eloped.
They tied the knot in Dubuque, Iowa, fled west to Denver, where he apparently partnered with another fellow in a gas station. Then it was off to La-La Land, where the 1940 census lists him as a hat salesman, while my aunt was unemployed, expecting her child, my cousin, in December. Apparently, the child and his 34 years kept Prince Charming out of WWII, which found him working in a dairy. Around 1944, consumed by guilt at leaving the priesthood, he petitioned the Chicago Archdiocese to be reinstated.
Sympathetic to his plight, the church advised no such consideration could be given while married, so a divorce was obtained in 1946. Consultation with the Vatican followed, and my former uncle was granted provisional status as a priest, having to serve a year’s probation before reinstatement. Alas, during that year he became ill with cancer. Two weeks after being fully restored to the priesthood, he died.
When I hear endless stories of priestly sexual abuse of children, which I firmly believe are rooted in the bizarre, destructive, unconscionable centurieslong practice of celibacy, I ponder my own family’s experience of three ruined lives and an extended family deprived of knowing and caring for them because of it.
— Walt Zlotow, Glen Ellyn
Mental health in schools
Having practiced as a child and adolescent clinical psychologist for the past 25 years, I have a novel idea. I completed two doctorate practicums (externships) in alternate school settings and one internship year at a residential facility in New York that had interface with both the public school in Dobbs Ferry and its own on-grounds school. Now one might think that a doctorate in clinical child psychology would make one, like myself, who wanted nothing more than to work in the public schools eligible to do so. Sadly and infuriatingly this is not the case. I was informed that I would need to spend another year in classes and another internship year in a school in order to attain a school master’s degree, despite my already having possessed a doctorate.
I could at this point rail against the turf war history between school codes protective of school psychologists and licensing and insurance reimbursement regulations supportive of clinical psychologists that created and has maintained this foolishness, but I’ve learned it’s pointless. Instead, like Puck in Shakespeare’s comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” I’m left to quip, “What fools these mortals be.”
— Mark Solomon, Libertyville
Revising the rules
A radical proposal, inspired by the past week’s Supreme Court nominee hearings: In addition to reinstating the 60-vote minimum for confirming federal judges, let’s add another requirement. To be approved by the Senate, a candidate must receive at least 30 percent of votes from each party that has at least 10 percent of all Senate seats. Prevent partisanship. Minimize posturing. Require a convincingly solid record of documented legal judgment. These are supposed to be judicial positions, not political ones.
I’m repeatedly appalled by governmental expressions of party before country. I’m additionally appalled by rampant expressions of party or policy before law. Nominating judges explicitly because of adherence to the nominator’s political opinion, with the intent of changing established law and precedent, is just not the way it ought to be.
I know this won’t happen. Maybe it can’t happen. I believe, for our country’s sake, it should happen.
— Bill Page, Morton Grove