That said, I was not personally excited when news of the motu proprio broke, since it doesn’t especially affect me. I attend a Paul VI Mass that is reverently celebrated by the Dominicans of Blessed Sacrament parish in Seattle. My attitude toward liturgy is “Just give me my lines and my blocking.” I then endeavor to learn and forget about them in precisely the same way I endeavor to break in my shoes. The point of shoes is not to notice them, but to walk in them. Shoes you constantly notice are Bad Shoes. Liturgy you focus on is liturgy that’s not doing its job, which is to refer us to God, not to itself.

Now there are two basic reasons people focus on liturgy instead of God, just as there are two reasons a person will focus on his shoes.

The first reason is that the shoes hurt. Lord knows that, in a time of widespread liturgical abuse, people have been hurt by badly celebrated liturgy, and I empathize with those who have. Many have suffered from self-styled “progressives” who regard the Paul VI Rite as their personal playground and laboratory. Worse, they have treated the Tridentine Rite and those who attend it as throwbacks to some imagined Dark Ages. In place of the authentic Paul VI Mass, many Catholics have had to endure a perpetual Feast of St. Narcissus celebrated by Fr. Heylookatme at what Amy Welborn has aptly called the “Church of Aren’t We Fabulous.” Instead of the worship of God, we get perpetual hymns such as the execrable “Anthem” celebrating our Usness, affirming us in our okayness, and glorifying our wonderfulness for being kind enough to admit God into those parts of our lives where we feel comfortable with Him. The notion among such “progressives” often seems to be that the Mass isn’t enough. They appear to think that people who come for the Christ Who is present in Word and Sacrament have to be bludgeoned into a sort of plastic bonhomie with glad-handing and yuk-it-up homilies about sports and TV shows. The phoniness of such “community-building” experiments on the lab rats in the pews can be awfully wearying for those who have lives and who do not require that the Mass be transformed into a Kiwanis Club meeting in order for them to be socially fulfilled. We like our commandments in the proper order: Love God, then neighbor.

That’s one of the reasons for the motu proprio, to try to give succor to those injured by dreadful abuses of the Paul VI Rite. I wish fans of the Tridentine Rite well in finding a Mass that is reverently celebrated and in receiving redress for legitimate grievances about real abuses, just as I hope the man with painful shoes will soon get new and comfortable shoes—so that both can get on with the business of walking with God.

But I also note that there is another reason some people become focused on their shoes, or the liturgy: oversensitivity. Some people are hypochondriacs who imagine injury where there is none or who grossly exaggerate small irritations into great big ones. Did the priest hold the Host high enough during the Consecration? Is that person dressed in a way I think fitting for Mass? I can’t bear altar girls! Those people held hands during the Our Father! There’s a parish “renewal” program in the bulletin—I wonder what that’s supposed to mean? I see they’ve added [...]]]> I am gratified that the long-awaited motu proprio from Pope Benedict, urging a wider celebration of the Tridentine Rite, is out. I’m happy for those, including my son, who love to worship in that way. More power to ’em. Some of the loveliest Catholics I know are devotees of the Tridentine Rite.

That said, I was not personally excited when news of the motu proprio broke, since it doesn’t especially affect me. I attend a Paul VI Mass that is reverently celebrated by the Dominicans of Blessed Sacrament parish in Seattle. My attitude toward liturgy is “Just give me my lines and my blocking.” I then endeavor to learn and forget about them in precisely the same way I endeavor to break in my shoes. The point of shoes is not to notice them, but to walk in them. Shoes you constantly notice are Bad Shoes. Liturgy you focus on is liturgy that’s not doing its job, which is to refer us to God, not to itself.

Now there are two basic reasons people focus on liturgy instead of God, just as there are two reasons a person will focus on his shoes.

The first reason is that the shoes hurt. Lord knows that, in a time of widespread liturgical abuse, people have been hurt by badly celebrated liturgy, and I empathize with those who have. Many have suffered from self-styled “progressives” who regard the Paul VI Rite as their personal playground and laboratory. Worse, they have treated the Tridentine Rite and those who attend it as throwbacks to some imagined Dark Ages. In place of the authentic Paul VI Mass, many Catholics have had to endure a perpetual Feast of St. Narcissus celebrated by Fr. Heylookatme at what Amy Welborn has aptly called the “Church of Aren’t We Fabulous.” Instead of the worship of God, we get perpetual hymns such as the execrable “Anthem” celebrating our Usness, affirming us in our okayness, and glorifying our wonderfulness for being kind enough to admit God into those parts of our lives where we feel comfortable with Him. The notion among such “progressives” often seems to be that the Mass isn’t enough. They appear to think that people who come for the Christ Who is present in Word and Sacrament have to be bludgeoned into a sort of plastic bonhomie with glad-handing and yuk-it-up homilies about sports and TV shows. The phoniness of such “community-building” experiments on the lab rats in the pews can be awfully wearying for those who have lives and who do not require that the Mass be transformed into a Kiwanis Club meeting in order for them to be socially fulfilled. We like our commandments in the proper order: Love God, then neighbor.

That’s one of the reasons for the motu proprio, to try to give succor to those injured by dreadful abuses of the Paul VI Rite. I wish fans of the Tridentine Rite well in finding a Mass that is reverently celebrated and in receiving redress for legitimate grievances about real abuses, just as I hope the man with painful shoes will soon get new and comfortable shoes—so that both can get on with the business of walking with God.

But I also note that there is another reason some people become focused on their shoes, or the liturgy: oversensitivity. Some people are hypochondriacs who imagine injury where there is none or who grossly exaggerate small irritations into great big ones. Did the priest hold the Host high enough during the Consecration? Is that person dressed in a way I think fitting for Mass? I can’t bear altar girls! Those people held hands during the Our Father! There’s a parish “renewal” program in the bulletin—I wonder what that’s supposed to mean? I see they’ve added that 15th Station of the Cross. That tells me all I need to know about this place.

Some people become so inflamed over such matters that they sacrifice the love of neighbor on the altar of liturgical correctness. Some can even reach the point where they regard those who attend the Paul VI Mass—even a reverently celebrated one—as second-class Catholics. I know this, because I’ve been on the receiving end of such judgments repeatedly. When I’ve stated that I believe the Mass is the Mass is the Mass and so I’m content with either the Tridentine or Paul VI liturgies, I’ve been asked by Tridentine enthusiasts, “Is a Black Mass a Mass also?” (Talk about telegraphing contempt!) I’ve been told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that the only reason I like the Paul VI Rite is that I don’t know any better, am still a Protestant at heart, or need to have exposure to the true Mass, which is vastly more nourishing to the soul than the pathetic desiccated “Novus Ordo.”

When I reply that I have been exposed to the Tridentine Rite and offer my chief impression from the experience (“Ah! Now I see why they wanted to reform the liturgy!”), there are frowns of disdain. Now, I don’t mean that I think the Tridentine Rite “inferior” any more than I think the Paul VI Rite inferior. I think my proper response to the Mass is gratitude, not a critical spirit. But, speaking only for me, I find the Paul VI Mass more spiritually nourishing (though any liturgy promulgated by the Church is good enough for me).

For this sin of believing and professing that any approved liturgy of the Church is good enough for me and that it’s not my job to find fault but to receive gratefully, I’m told that what I’m really saying is “it is all about me and what the liturgy does or doesn’t do for me.” In that marvelous “heads we win, tails you lose” arrangement, I am supposed to feel the superiority of the Tridentine Rite, and if I don’t feel it, it’s because I’m selfishly putting my feelings ahead of the TRUTH, which is fully expressed by the feelings of Tridentine Rite fans.

I don’t think those who prefer the Tridentine Rite are, for that reason, either better or worse Catholics than those who are at home in the Paul VI Rite. Nor do I regard the Mass as something we are commissioned by Christ to weigh in the balance and find wanting. To be sure, I dislike liturgical abuses, whether they be the apocryphal clown Mass or the five-minute Tridentine Hunting Masses of European nobility (in which the Mass was sped along at light speed so m’lord could get on with his fox-hunting expedition). But I don’t throw the babe out with the bath and say that, because the Paul VI liturgy is often abused, it is therefore an abuse itself.

Consequently, I lack a lot of interest in the motu proprio. I’m glad Benedict is interested in it. That’s his job. I simply don’t see why it’s my job. My parish is reverently celebrating the Paul VI Rite. My job is to receive that gift, not to look it in the mouth. Nor is my job to suggest that, if you like the Tridentine Rite instead, you are a second-class Catholic and a narcissist. It would be nice if many enthusiasts for the Tridentine liturgy could return the favor.

Mark Shea blogs at Catholic and Enjoying It!

This article first appeared in the October 2007 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Imagination builds, it constructs, it designs and redesigns. It is unstoppable as commerce, pervasive as advertising. It is also dirty, like politics, and shady, like business. In Lower Binfield, the Oxfordshire town where the protagonist of Orwell’s Coming Up for Air lives as a child, his father’s poultry-feed trade is ruined when a slick competitor, a big retail chain called Sarazins, sets up shop down the road. It springs up like a figment of some baleful imagination, an alien and unappeasable phantom, claiming its share of reality as though by draconian right. Before long the price of fodder is undercut, while the family’s psychological response—calling to mind the resigned stupefaction, relieved by occasional cattiness, of a circle of female acquaintances before a resplendent newcomer with a surgically enhanced bosom—epitomizes the popular attitude to big business outlined and presaged by Marx in Capital. “Bright green paint, gilt lettering, gardening tools painted red and green,” reminisces Orwell’s protagonist with a shudder of epochal tristesse. How unfair it all is, how sordid.

Cheap fodder! True, the word cheap, when applied to a woman, still retains the negative connotations that are nowadays decidedly out of place in any commercial context, but this, quite clearly, is an anachronism, an obsolescent convention, a tired prejudice hanging in there by the skin of its chemically bleached teeth. In a truly brave, truly new world, there ought not to be room for such squeamishness, for if silicone breasts are not immoral as a way of undercutting the competition, how can the long-standing practice of price slashing raise any permanently blackened eyebrows? No, in the truly brave, truly new world there ought not to be lines drawn in the sand.

“Oh, please, I don’t want a cheap woman,” says the man who has been asked to imagine his beloved, as he clutches to the last shred of oldie-worldie morality. How pathetic he is, this hunchbacked Rigoletto, in his childlike obstinacy! How like the proprietor of a corner shop on the verge of financial ruin, who grumbles that he will go this far and no further, not even if it means hiring an assassin to do away with the profligate Duke! Questa o quella, imagination’s brave new world seems to be ululating all round him, I can get any woman I want, take her, steal her, buy her, have her, and have her again; and how sane, how robust, how thoroughly rational and logical, is this line of reasoning, when at last confronted with his own set of musty old notions, at once fragmentary, inconsistent, and ever so laughably outmoded.

Let me answer him. “So, a resounding yes to purplish lipstick, and yes to the way she keeps brushing back that loose strand of blonde hair—by the way, it takes three-and-a-half hours for her colorist to get it to just the shade you’re in love with, a monthly ordeal that costs more than a nurse’s weekly wages, and very bad for the hair, too—and also a tentative yes to her having rather enjoyed Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, but a firm no to liposuction and other invasive procedures, no to looking cheap, and [...]]]> All one can ever imagine of Eve is the fig leaf, but the whole issue is more universal, and at the same time somehow more prickly, than any isolated contretemps in the Legoland of the senses. Say “glutton,” and in your mind’s eye you’ll see a mutton joint being brandished by some Rabelaisian hand; say “hunter,” and you’ll see a shotgun and the obligatory hat; say “courtesan,” and you’ll see a dressing table, a vase of bonbons, the lamp in the window. Try saying “beloved,” then. As in “my beloved.” What is it that you see? Wait, don’t tell me. Just give me a minute, and I’ll try to imagine it for myself.

Imagination builds, it constructs, it designs and redesigns. It is unstoppable as commerce, pervasive as advertising. It is also dirty, like politics, and shady, like business. In Lower Binfield, the Oxfordshire town where the protagonist of Orwell’s Coming Up for Air lives as a child, his father’s poultry-feed trade is ruined when a slick competitor, a big retail chain called Sarazins, sets up shop down the road. It springs up like a figment of some baleful imagination, an alien and unappeasable phantom, claiming its share of reality as though by draconian right. Before long the price of fodder is undercut, while the family’s psychological response—calling to mind the resigned stupefaction, relieved by occasional cattiness, of a circle of female acquaintances before a resplendent newcomer with a surgically enhanced bosom—epitomizes the popular attitude to big business outlined and presaged by Marx in Capital. “Bright green paint, gilt lettering, gardening tools painted red and green,” reminisces Orwell’s protagonist with a shudder of epochal tristesse. How unfair it all is, how sordid.

Cheap fodder! True, the word cheap, when applied to a woman, still retains the negative connotations that are nowadays decidedly out of place in any commercial context, but this, quite clearly, is an anachronism, an obsolescent convention, a tired prejudice hanging in there by the skin of its chemically bleached teeth. In a truly brave, truly new world, there ought not to be room for such squeamishness, for if silicone breasts are not immoral as a way of undercutting the competition, how can the long-standing practice of price slashing raise any permanently blackened eyebrows? No, in the truly brave, truly new world there ought not to be lines drawn in the sand.

“Oh, please, I don’t want a cheap woman,” says the man who has been asked to imagine his beloved, as he clutches to the last shred of oldie-worldie morality. How pathetic he is, this hunchbacked Rigoletto, in his childlike obstinacy! How like the proprietor of a corner shop on the verge of financial ruin, who grumbles that he will go this far and no further, not even if it means hiring an assassin to do away with the profligate Duke! Questa o quella, imagination’s brave new world seems to be ululating all round him, I can get any woman I want, take her, steal her, buy her, have her, and have her again; and how sane, how robust, how thoroughly rational and logical, is this line of reasoning, when at last confronted with his own set of musty old notions, at once fragmentary, inconsistent, and ever so laughably outmoded.

Let me answer him. “So, a resounding yes to purplish lipstick, and yes to the way she keeps brushing back that loose strand of blonde hair—by the way, it takes three-and-a-half hours for her colorist to get it to just the shade you’re in love with, a monthly ordeal that costs more than a nurse’s weekly wages, and very bad for the hair, too—and also a tentative yes to her having rather enjoyed Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, but a firm no to liposuction and other invasive procedures, no to looking cheap, and no to seeing the Colombian who says he’s a film producer on Tuesday afternoons between the hours of four and seven? You really are an old fuddy-duddy, you know.

“Once in the world there existed the concept of inalienable properties, or features, such as the length of a nose, the color of eyes, an hereditary title, a hunting estate in the Black Forest. Or the concept of property in general, upon the immutability of which political economists, Adam Smith for instance, relied in their writings as they came up with novel ways of rationalizing it. Then Marx came along, and explained that all economic property was but a figment of class imagination, that the mirage could be wished away in a blinking of an eye, that just as feudal landlords’ idea of property has been supplanted by the mill owners’ or the bankers’, so too will this, more progressive, idea vanish with them once progress has razed their satanic mills and banks to the ground.

“And now you turn round and say no to progress. You protest that you want this woman for what you imagine to be her inalienable properties, like the fashionable tint of Chanel lipstick she uses, and that you love her for what, in your tawdry little conservative mind, are her immutable features, like the smell of peroxide in her hair, without once stopping to reflect that progress is another name for inexorable, escalating, eventually totalitarian alienation, indeed that the whole woman exists in your imagination as tenuously, as conditionally, as private property exists in the world pictured by Marx. You are playing at Lego all right, just like the feudal landowners and the commercial bankers of yesteryear, picking and choosing which building blocks of reality to breathe life into, and some of the blocks are spurned as being off-limits, taboo, against nature. In the end you will end up like your predecessors, swept away by the rising tide of totalitarian consciousness, by the futurism that is quite immune to such scruples and will crush a child as easily as it crushes the child’s toy.”

A Modern Prometheus was the evocative subtitle with which Mary Shelley had supplied her tale of Frankenstein. According to the testimony of Marx’s daughter Eleanor, Prometheus was the political thinker’s favorite hero, while his favorite work of literature was Goethe’s Faust. If anything, emotion is even more nakedly a politically incubated creature than I make it out to be in this euhemerizing rendition of a private mythology.

Andrei Navrozov is Chronicles' European editor.

This article first appeared in the October 2007 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

The Silent Service held a special fascination for many, and Hollywood was not remiss during the 1940’s and 50’s in portraying American submarines in death-defying missions against the Japanese in the Pacific. Two hundred and fifty U.S. Navy submarines went on at least one patrol during World War II. Fifty-two never returned. Their epitaph: “Overdue, presumed lost.” More than 3,500 submariners lost their lives, a fifth of all who went on patrol. Their rules of engagement were simple: “Find ’em. Chase ’em. Sink ’em.” And the submariners did just that, sending more than 1,100 Japanese merchant ships and 214 Japanese naval vessels to the bottom.

The submariner who sank the most Japanese ships was Richard “Dick” O’Kane. He performed best under the greatest pressure in the most dangerous circumstances. Before he went into action, he was described by a fellow officer as talkative and boastful and something of a loose cannon. The same officer said that, once a battle commenced, O’Kane

was calm, terse and utterly cool. My opinion of him underwent a permanent change. It was the most dramatic example I was ever to see of a man transformed under pressure from what seemed almost adolescent petulance to a prime fighting machine.

The prime fighting machine, first as the executive officer of Wahoo and then as the commander of Tang, sank 31 Japanese ships. Once, while on the surface and surrounded by Japanese ships, O’Kane sent Tang headlong into a Japanese destroyer that was racing directly at her. O’Kane miraculously put his last torpedo into the bow of the enemy ship, and down she went, allowing Tang to escape. If sinking the most Japanese ships and a surface duel with a Japanese destroyer were not enough, O’Kane also set the record for rescuing downed American pilots. During April 1944, he guided Tang dangerously close to reefs at Truk to rescue pilots by the ones, twos, and threes until he had 22 smiling aviators aboard his sub.

Although the Japanese had many chances to sink the daredevil O’Kane, they never succeeded. O’Kane sank himself. In October 1944, after sinking five Japanese ships in a series of spectacular encounters in the narrow waters of the Formosa Strait, O’Kane was gunning for a sixth Japanese ship when one of Tang’s own torpedoes malfunctioned, turned about, and hit the sub. The explosion rocked the [...]]]> Now that the youngest of our World War II veterans, with but a few exceptions, are in their 80’s, I fear that, as they die, memory of them will die also. While teaching history in college for more than 30 years—15 of those at UCLA, where a single class could have more than 400 students—I was the target of book representatives from a dozen or more publishers. Nearly every year, I was presented with sample copies of new U.S. history textbooks. Each new textbook devoted more space to obscure figures of modest significance who were black or American Indian or female. I searched the same books in vain for mention of the most prominent of our World War II heroes. Where was the most decorated American, Audie Murphy? The hero of the Battle of Midway, Wade McClusky? The first recipient of the Medal of Honor, Butch O’Hare? The top ace, Dick Bong? The top naval ace, Dave McCampbell? The top Marine ace, Pappy Boyington? The commander of the 101st Airborne who replied “Nuts” to the Germans and held fast at Bastogne, Anthony McAuliffe? Or the submarine ace of aces, Dick O’Kane? Nowhere to be found. These were the heroes I learned about as a child. They were written about in books, depicted in movies, and, most importantly, were the topic of conversations in the homes and neighborhoods of America.

The Silent Service held a special fascination for many, and Hollywood was not remiss during the 1940’s and 50’s in portraying American submarines in death-defying missions against the Japanese in the Pacific. Two hundred and fifty U.S. Navy submarines went on at least one patrol during World War II. Fifty-two never returned. Their epitaph: “Overdue, presumed lost.” More than 3,500 submariners lost their lives, a fifth of all who went on patrol. Their rules of engagement were simple: “Find ’em. Chase ’em. Sink ’em.” And the submariners did just that, sending more than 1,100 Japanese merchant ships and 214 Japanese naval vessels to the bottom.

The submariner who sank the most Japanese ships was Richard “Dick” O’Kane. He performed best under the greatest pressure in the most dangerous circumstances. Before he went into action, he was described by a fellow officer as talkative and boastful and something of a loose cannon. The same officer said that, once a battle commenced, O’Kane

was calm, terse and utterly cool. My opinion of him underwent a permanent change. It was the most dramatic example I was ever to see of a man transformed under pressure from what seemed almost adolescent petulance to a prime fighting machine.

The prime fighting machine, first as the executive officer of Wahoo and then as the commander of Tang, sank 31 Japanese ships. Once, while on the surface and surrounded by Japanese ships, O’Kane sent Tang headlong into a Japanese destroyer that was racing directly at her. O’Kane miraculously put his last torpedo into the bow of the enemy ship, and down she went, allowing Tang to escape. If sinking the most Japanese ships and a surface duel with a Japanese destroyer were not enough, O’Kane also set the record for rescuing downed American pilots. During April 1944, he guided Tang dangerously close to reefs at Truk to rescue pilots by the ones, twos, and threes until he had 22 smiling aviators aboard his sub.

Although the Japanese had many chances to sink the daredevil O’Kane, they never succeeded. O’Kane sank himself. In October 1944, after sinking five Japanese ships in a series of spectacular encounters in the narrow waters of the Formosa Strait, O’Kane was gunning for a sixth Japanese ship when one of Tang’s own torpedoes malfunctioned, turned about, and hit the sub. The explosion rocked the boat from stem to stern. O’Kane and eight others on the bridge were hurled into the sea. Hanging on to debris, they watched as Tang’s stern suddenly sank, pulling the rest of the sub to the bottom, 180 feet below.

About two-dozen sailors remained alive inside Tang, her stern resting on the ocean floor and her sleek hull pointed toward the surface at a steep angle. An officer alone in the conning tower took a deep breath, opened a hatch, and made a free ascent to the surface. A dozen others, some with the Momsen lung, were able to get out of the sub also. Eight made it to the surface alive. Only five survived to be captured by the Japanese. The officer in the conning tower and the others were the only American sailors in the entire war to escape from a sunken submarine.

Meanwhile, O’Kane and the eight men with him swam, treaded water, and clung to wreckage. By the next morning, only O’Kane and four others remained alive. Picked up by a Japanese destroyer, they were beaten and interrogated. Taken first to Formosa, they were eventually confined in a prison camp near Tokyo. The Japanese failed to notify the Red Cross, as required by conventions, of their capture. O’Kane and the others would remain missing in action for the duration of the war. The Japanese tortured and interrogated O’Kane almost daily. He was near death when liberated, weighing only 88 pounds and wracked with scurvy and beriberi. He slowly recovered from the inhuman ordeal and testified at the Tokyo war-crimes trials. His gallantry during the war earned him the Medal of Honor, three Navy Crosses, three Silver Stars, and, for wounds sustained, the Purple Heart. The Annapolis graduate remained in the Navy until 1957, serving for two years as the CO of the Submarine School and retiring as a rear admiral.

Jack Kennedy, the commander of a PT boat who also served as President of the United States, said, “A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.” Yet, America’s most decorated sailor of World War II who put nearly a quarter-million tons of Japanese shipping on the bottom, hastening the end of the war and saving countless Marine lives on Pacific islands, is left unmentioned in today’s textbooks.

Roger D. McGrath is the author of Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes.

This article first appeared in the October 2007 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

That’s what one homeowner in Bradley Heights/Larchmont will have to pay if the city of Rockford succeeds in annexing the neighborhood—and that’s in addition to the actual tax levy for the library, which will amount to another $580.50 (approximately). Meanwhile, the 94 property owners in Bradley Heights/Larchmont will pay an average of $1,124.11 over the next year (as well as the actual tax levy) for the privilege of being able to check out the latest Dan Brown novel. That’s the difference between the taxes they would have paid if their neighborhood had remained an unincorporated area in Winnebago County (with a 2006 property-tax rate of 8.189 percent) instead of being forced into the city of Rockford (with a 2007 property-tax rate of 10.4709 percent), according to a spreadsheet put together by Bradley Heights resident Betsy Easton. (The tax rates are applied to equalized assessed value, which, in Illinois, is one third of market value.)

Now, to be fair, the city’s legal director, Patrick Hayes, in a form letter sent to Mrs. Easton and all other property owners in the Bradley Heights/Larchmont neighborhood, made it clear that

Becoming a resident of the City of Rockford has several benefits and services, including full-time police and fire protection, ambulance and paramedic service from the Rockford Fire Department; maintenance and repair of streets and snowplowing of local streets by the Rockford Department of Public Works; and a free Rockford Public Library card.

For an average of a little over $1,100 per year, these services might make for an attractive package, if the residents of Bradley Heights/Larchmont weren’t already receiving them from Winnebago County or Rockford Township—all, that is, except for the Rockford Public Library card.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of residents of the neighborhood have been strongly opposed to the city’s gracious offer to provide them with “free” library cards against their will. Patrick Hayes argues that the neighborhood is “eligible for annexation into the City of Rockford under Illinois State Law based on the fact that [it] is less than 60 acres and surrounded by the City.” Bradley Heights/Larchmont is indeed surrounded by the city of Rockford on all sides, and the Illinois Municipal Code does state that

Whenever any unincorporated territory containing 60 acres or less, is wholly bounded by (a) one or more municipalities, . . . (d) one or more municipalities and property owned by the State of Illinois, except highway right-of-way owned in fee by the State, . . . that territory may be annexed by any municipality by which it is bounded in whole or in part, by the passage of an ordinance to that effect after notice is given . . .

There’s a third detail to be considered, however: Is the territory of Bradley Heights/Larchmont really “less than 60 acres”? That, it appears, depends on who is doing the measuring, and with what purpose in mind.

Both the residents of Bradley Heights/Larchmont and Hayes agree that the neighborhood covers approximately 66 acres. And, under normal circumstances, 66 would be greater than 60. But with more than a million dollars in tax revenue over the next decade at stake, the city went looking for a way to make 66 be less than 60.

And, Hayes contends, they found it in a July [...]]]> How much would you pay for a library card? In Rockford, if you are not a resident, you have to pay $140 per year for the privilege of using the Rockford Public Library system. With six branches scattered throughout the city and over 400,000 volumes, most avid readers who aren’t relying on the library for scholarly research would get their money’s worth in a few months.
But what if you had to pay $4,197.24? And what if the cost of your library card were based on the assessed value of your house, so that, in all likelihood, it would rise every year?

That’s what one homeowner in Bradley Heights/Larchmont will have to pay if the city of Rockford succeeds in annexing the neighborhood—and that’s in addition to the actual tax levy for the library, which will amount to another $580.50 (approximately). Meanwhile, the 94 property owners in Bradley Heights/Larchmont will pay an average of $1,124.11 over the next year (as well as the actual tax levy) for the privilege of being able to check out the latest Dan Brown novel. That’s the difference between the taxes they would have paid if their neighborhood had remained an unincorporated area in Winnebago County (with a 2006 property-tax rate of 8.189 percent) instead of being forced into the city of Rockford (with a 2007 property-tax rate of 10.4709 percent), according to a spreadsheet put together by Bradley Heights resident Betsy Easton. (The tax rates are applied to equalized assessed value, which, in Illinois, is one third of market value.)

Now, to be fair, the city’s legal director, Patrick Hayes, in a form letter sent to Mrs. Easton and all other property owners in the Bradley Heights/Larchmont neighborhood, made it clear that

Becoming a resident of the City of Rockford has several benefits and services, including full-time police and fire protection, ambulance and paramedic service from the Rockford Fire Department; maintenance and repair of streets and snowplowing of local streets by the Rockford Department of Public Works; and a free Rockford Public Library card.

For an average of a little over $1,100 per year, these services might make for an attractive package, if the residents of Bradley Heights/Larchmont weren’t already receiving them from Winnebago County or Rockford Township—all, that is, except for the Rockford Public Library card.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of residents of the neighborhood have been strongly opposed to the city’s gracious offer to provide them with “free” library cards against their will. Patrick Hayes argues that the neighborhood is “eligible for annexation into the City of Rockford under Illinois State Law based on the fact that [it] is less than 60 acres and surrounded by the City.” Bradley Heights/Larchmont is indeed surrounded by the city of Rockford on all sides, and the Illinois Municipal Code does state that

Whenever any unincorporated territory containing 60 acres or less, is wholly bounded by (a) one or more municipalities, . . . (d) one or more municipalities and property owned by the State of Illinois, except highway right-of-way owned in fee by the State, . . . that territory may be annexed by any municipality by which it is bounded in whole or in part, by the passage of an ordinance to that effect after notice is given . . .

There’s a third detail to be considered, however: Is the territory of Bradley Heights/Larchmont really “less than 60 acres”? That, it appears, depends on who is doing the measuring, and with what purpose in mind.

Both the residents of Bradley Heights/Larchmont and Hayes agree that the neighborhood covers approximately 66 acres. And, under normal circumstances, 66 would be greater than 60. But with more than a million dollars in tax revenue over the next decade at stake, the city went looking for a way to make 66 be less than 60.

And, Hayes contends, they found it in a July 28, 2006, ruling from the Second District Appellate Court of Illinois. In that case, the city of West Chicago annexed a parcel of 62.75 acres by claiming that the area occupied by Route 64 (a highway owned by the state) should be excluded from the total. That brought it down to 57 acres and made it eligible for annexation. The appellate court sided with the city of West Chicago, pointing out that the Illinois Municipal Code requires a municipality annexing a parcel bounded by a state highway to annex the highway as well, “to prevent any question regarding jurisdiction, maintenance, financing, and traffic control once the annexation has taken place.”

That decision, Hayes argues, applies to the annexation of Bradley Heights/Larchmont by Rockford. Anyone who looks at a map of the area, however, cannot help but notice what would seem a salient fact: There are no state highways bounding the neighborhood. Nor, for that matter, are there any state highways running through the neighborhood. The nearest state highway lies to the west of the neighborhood, running through property already claimed by the city of Rockford.

Still, the functionaries at the city, well trained in the New Math in the Rockford public schools, did a few quick calculations and determined that the size of the neighborhood is really 56 acres. How did they arrive at that number? Simple: Hayes told them to remove all streets and rights-of-way from the total.
Problem solved. Now the 94 poor, benighted property owners in Bradley Heights/Larchmont can enjoy their “free” library cards! Those who had previously paid the $140 fee to obtain a card can now apply it to their $1,100 property-tax increase instead! It’s a win-win situation!

And I’ve got a state highway to sell you.

When Rockford Mayor Larry Morris­sey, who appointed Hayes, was elected, many of us hoped that we would see a change in business as usual down at City Hall. But Hayes notified the residents of Bradley Heights/Larchmont a mere six weeks before the annexation was scheduled to occur and, from the first correspondence, spoke of it not as a possibility but as a done deal. Jim Easton, Betsy’s husband, said that Hayes told residents that he understood their concerns, but annexation is in the best interests of the current residents of the city, so the city intends to exercise its legal right.

Often, when municipalities annex new developments, the corresponding increase in tax revenue is exceeded by the increase in expenditure on infrastructure and public services. But an established neighborhood such as this, which already has city sewer, its own independent water system, all the roads it needs, and only a handful of scattered lots without houses, is a ripe plum ready for the picking. Most of the increased property taxes paid by the Eas­tons and their neighbors will go to subsidize other neighborhoods elsewhere in the city—for instance, future developments annexed at a net loss.

The neighborhood is fighting the annexation in court, and, with so much tax money on the table, neither side is likely to settle for defeat. Thus, the case will probably end up before the Illinois Supreme Court a few years down the road. On the face of it, the appeals-court decision on which the city’s action rests is actually fairly restrained, concerned primarily with determining the original intent of the legislature. For instance, in referring to another case, the court notes that it “involved a private railroad right-of-way as opposed to a public highway” and argues that it does not apply because “the remaining sections of the Code failed to make any allusion to railroad lands as distinguished from other types of property.” Since the same appeals court will eventually hear the Bradley Heights/Larchmont case, that may be good news for the property owners, since township roads are clearly not state highways, nor are they mentioned in the section of the Illinois Municipal Code governing annexation.

Who will likely prevail? I have no idea. The daily newspaper, on the other hand, has already ruled for the city, declaring in an unsigned editorial that “A recent court ruling evaporated [the neighborhood’s] safety zone because it said streets and rights of way do not have to be included in the total acreage.” Either all the members of the Rockford Register Star’s editorial board suffer from a strange form of dyslexia that causes them to read “township road” wherever “state highway” appears, or they are taking their cues from Patrick Hayes. Neither prospect should give much comfort to those who long for a free and independent local press.

There are larger issues at stake here as well. In our post-Kelo world, municipalities have every reason to believe that they are the ultimate owners of all land within their borders. Depending on the outcome of the Bradley Heights/Larchmont case, they may have reason to believe that they hold similar title to all land that touches their borders. It doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to conceive of a situation in which a giant corporation known for its practice of leveling forests and fields to plant a big-box store in the center of a 60-acre parking lot might approach a city with a plan to annex a neighborhood, raze it, and hand the property over for redevelopment. All it would take to convince the city—and the courts—is to prove that the increase in sales-tax revenue would be even greater than the increase in property-tax revenue.
The Lords of Bentonville must be lying awake at night in anticipation.

Scott P. Richert is the executive editor of Chronicles.

This article first appeared in the October 2007 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

A firsthand account.

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Letter From Punxsutawney: The Slavic League by Greg Kaza

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TRADE: Free Trade and the Sacrificialists by Larry Eubank

THE SERVILE STATE: On the Lam From the Census Bureau by Doug Bandow

SINS OF OMISSION by Roger D. McGrath

BREAKING GLASS by Philip Jenkins

THE ROCKFORD FILES by Scott P. Richert

EUROPEAN DIARY by Andrei Navrozov

THE AMERICAN INTEREST by Srdja Trifkovic

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POLEMICS & EXCHANGES

AMERICAN PROSCENIUM

CULTURAL REVOLUTIONS

POETRY

A Field of Peonies and
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Cover by George McCartney, Jr.
Inside illustrations by Melanie Anderson.