Hogan's slogans

A noble and practical-minded colleague of mine, whose surname rhymes with "Logan," recently offered this bit of down-homey Catholic wisdom over a plate of Slows slow-smoked barbecue in Corktown, the old Irish neighborhood near downtown Detroit: There are four necessary things -- indispensable things -- he said, which any Catholic needs to know in order to survive in today's world:

• The Book of Genesis,
• The Gospel of St. John,
• The Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended version of the movie), and
• Selections from the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Another recurrent theme in conversations with him is this: the family. People in Detroit never go on talking too long without the conversation coming back to the discrepancy between the latent potential in the City of Detroit and the sad state of disrepair and near-bankruptcy in which this former "Paris of the Midwest" now finds herself. No solution to the problem can ever hope to succeed, my friend is fond of saying -- not a light rail system, not a structural reorganization of the City Council, nothing -- if it does not also involve the rebuilding of robust and healthy domestic families in Detroit. I think he may be right; and part of that may depend on producing a generation familiar, minimally, with the aforementioned "four necessary things."