“I feel very happy about it; it’s going to save a lot of money.”  This is what Grace Straight, 78 years old, says of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ new Prescription Advantage drug insurance plan. She and her husband, Donald Straight, are longtime residents of the town of Templeton, living in the same house since 1948.

Donald, who has just applied, agrees with Grace: “It’s a good program, by the looks of it.” He has been retired for twelve years and needs to take several medications daily to keep himself in good health, medications that he could not afford if left to his own resources.

The Straights stand among the early enrollers in the new plan which officially began on April 1st. At least one television station in Boston has reported that Prescription Advantage is running far behind expected enrollments, but Secretary of Elder Affairs Lillian Glickman assures me that this information is incorrect. Already more than fifteen thousand elders and people with certain specific disabilities have signed up for the program.

Secretary Glickman says, “We are ahead of where we want to be.” And this achievement comes before a mass media campaign scheduled to begin in May. Her hope is that all eligible elder citizens will seize the opportunity to sign up.

She expresses excitement about the program. “Finally, every elder will have access to coverage that is affordable,” Glickman says. And she takes satisfaction in Massachusetts being the first state to adopt such comprehensive coverage. “The eyes of the nation will be upon us,” she boasts; “We hope it will inform the national debate.”

Massachusetts has already had programs in place to provide drug coverage for its elder citizens. But these Pharmacy and Pharmacy Plus programs will now be replaced by a new and more sweeping plan.

To get information about Prescription Advantage you can simply call 1-800-AGE-INFO, where you can also find out how to enroll. In addition, you can contact the Council on Aging in your city or town or one of the 27 regional ASAPS (Aging Service Access Points).

In its newsletter, the Executive office of Elder Affairs summarizes how the new program works: “Prescription Advantage enrollees will pay premiums, deductibles and co-payments. Unlike other insurance plans, payments will be graduated and are based on gross annual income.

“The state will contribute to the premiums and deductibles for certain low-income enrollees. Members whose income falls below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) pay lower co-payments.

“The maximum monthly premium will be $82, and the state will pay the full cost of premiums for individuals at or below 188% of the FPL.

“There is also an unlimited coverage benefit, and the maximum out-of-pocket expense for co-payments and deductibles for any enrollee will be the lesser of  $2,000 or 10% of gross annual household income.”

For a sharp appraisal of Prescription Advantage, I turned to two well-informed advocates for older people. John O'Neill, Executive Director of Somerville Cambridge Elder Services and current president of the Massachusetts Home Care Association, feels mixed about the program. “It’s good that it’s a public plan,” he says, and it should prove helpful for low-income people. But it has too many deductibles and co-payments for his taste.

“The premiums are a shot in the dark,” he adds, because no one knows how much the whole program will cost. “They are afraid of adverse selection, “ he says of the planners, because so many people who are big users of prescription drugs may sign up. And the plan depends on state funding from year to year.

Another highly knowledgeable advocate for older people, Art Mazer of Cambridge, feels concern about some public policy issues connected with Prescription Advantage. A veteran health care analyst with many years’ service with the federal part of the Medicaid program, Mazer also welcomes Prescription Advantage because he sees its promise for so many low-income people.

At the same time he feels critical of arrangements behind the new program for at least three reasons. First, he says, “I am opposed to insuring one item of health care, namely drugs, without insuring other services.”

Secondly, Prescription Advantage will be funded entirely out of funds that Massachusetts received from the settlement with tobacco companies. Currently, some thirty percent of these funds are being used for other needed health services but all that money and more will be soaked up to pay for the new drug program. He fears that the total costs to the state will go far beyond projections.

Thirdly, Mazer regrets that Prescription Advantage will not lower the costs of drugs. The companies that produce them will still be free to spend twice as much money on advertising as they do for research. This advertising of prescription drugs is a practice, he says, that allows patients to pressure their doctors to prescribe more of these drugs, even when not advisable.

Richard Griffin

Anyone who thinks that old-fashioned Southern charm is dead has not met David Prior. This 66-year-old native of Arkansas is warm, witty, and thoroughly gracious. Sitting down with him to breakfast, as I did two weeks ago, proved to be a pleasant experience indeed.

His success as a politician is rivaled only by that other Arkansan of recent residence in the White House and his reputation for integrity is a whole lot better. Prior was elected Congressman, Governor, and Senator over a long career of public service. Now, after leaving the Senate, he has become director of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government.

You might think that his new job is a come-down from the United States Senate. Not so – – David Prior loves it and sees it as another form of public service. During breakfast, some students came by and it became clear how they look up to him and how he enjoys their company.

During his time in the Senate, Prior became chairman of the Aging Committee. As such, he proposed legislation on matters that affect older Americans. Before that time, he led the way toward getting the House of Representatives to establish its own aging committee. He feels proud of creating this platform from which Claude Pepper championed action for the nation’s elder citizens.

The stories David Prior tells about first becoming involved with elder issues show how much he values direct experience. When first elected to Congress, he went to visit the Arkansas nursing home where his mother’s great-aunt was a resident. When he saw the conditions that prevailed there, he was appalled. He felt aghast that the old people who lived there were getting such irresponsible treatment.

After this raising of his consciousness, he resolved to change the ways in which institutionalized old people are cared for. Soon afterward, he flew to a nursing home in Pennsylvania where eight residents had died in a fire. That facility did not even have fire extinguishers. Though the legislation he introduced did not get through the House bureaucracy, he got a federal agency to establish protective regulations.

His frustration at the slow pace of change moved him to say to himself, “Heck, I’m going to go out and volunteer and see what it’s like.” This resolution led him to serve in eleven nursing homes in Maryland and Virginia, without telling them that he was a congressman. After a single day on the job, one home offered him the job of director.

On his last day as volunteer, he brought a news photographer with him. This led to coverage in the New York Times that spread around the world. The result was that Prior received twenty thousand letters, many of them from college kids concerned about relatives. Looking back on this experience, he says, “I really learned something about generations.”

Later in our conversation I raised the subject of how David Prior experiences himself as a person growing older. Three themes emerge forcefully in his response to this question, one that turns out to be surprisingly difficult for most people to answer.

For David Prior, the first idea that springs to mind is about young people. “There’s some special tonic about young people that I think is invaluable,” he says. “I’m constantly around them; I have such great hopes for them.”

Secondly, he wants to continue doing something meaningful. Association with young people makes his current job precious to him: “I would hate to get fired, to cut this off because it’s given me a lot of interest and reason to work.”

 He contrasts his situation with that of some who have retired. “I have so many friends who go to the golf club at 11:30, then sit there and tee off about 1:30, then go home in the afternoon and take a nap. At 10 o’clock they watch TV and go to sleep.” He explains: “I like golf but that’s not my deal.”

A third theme is the rapidity of the years. “I can’t imagine it; someone else is 66, not me.” He looks back and asks himself, “Where did all those years go?”

About his years as governor and senator, he says: “So much of that is a blur. It’s like I stand on the street corner watching the traffic go by.”

That time passed so fast that he now has trouble separating out what happened when. He kept some journals but the material is not organized. However, he does imagine doing something to reconstruct this time: “Someday, I’ll get a tape recorder, sit around with some friends, and just yak.”

Obviously David Prior has a full treasury of experiences to enrich his old age. After growing up in a small town in the old south, he saw sweeping changes in both public and private life. They form a legacy that he can reflect on for years ahead and sift for their meaning.

Richard Griffin

“You start off with a lot of nice words. Then comes the hard part. You’re supposed to compromise, but that wasn’t for me. You’re supposed to talk things over. I just waited for things to blow over. All six of my wives had the same complaints. I got sick of it. I’m better off single.”

These words come from Harry Nichols, 71 years of age, in conversation with Wendy Lustbader. She includes this brief report among more than two hundred encounters with older people in her new book “What’s Worth Knowing.” In the pages of this small volume these elders share with the author their views of life seen from the vantage point of many years.

A geriatric social worker in Seattle, Wendy Lustbader ranks as one of the most skilled speakers I know. At a conference of the American Society on Aging, held in New Orleans during the first week of March, she talked about the people who figure in her book. Her presentation held audience members rapt and at times even moved us to tears.

However, when she recounted Harry Nichols’ words in the quotation above, “All six of my wives had the same complaints,” we all broke into laughter.  Of course, we laughed knowing that here was a man who lacks self-knowledge to a painful degree. He can say some of the right words about compromise and talking things over but he cannot put them into practice.

This failure has sentenced him to a chaotic style of living. As Wendy Lustbader describes it: “Living in wifeless freedom, Harry Nichols gradually become buried in the debris of daily living. His floors and furniture were covered with piles of tin cans and old newspapers, but he refused to accept the assistance of a county-funded housekeeper. In response to my pleas that he accept some help for the sake of his health and safety, he thundered, ‘I told you, I had enough of women messing around in my house.’”

Richard Griffin

As the Angel sang, tears filled my eyes and flowed down my cheeks. The voice of mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung voice rose so beautifully as she gave expression to Cardinal Newman’s words and Edward Elgar’s music that I could not help but weep.

With Ben Zander conducting the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in Symphony Hall and the Chorus Pro Musica assisting, the “Dream of Gerontius” stirred my depths last week, as it always does. This musical drama of a soul’s journey through death to heaven never fails to move me with the wonder of it all.

I had last heard this favorite piece performed in 1992 in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, another splendid site for this oratorio. On that occasion too, I remember how beautifully Catherine Wyn-Rogers  sang the angel. And in1982 I had heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra do it with Jessye Norman singing the same role.

Such esthetic events often lead me to reflect on early educational experiences, on what counts in the long run, and what does not. Two kinds of experiences in particular stand out.

The first took place when I was in the early grades in the Belmont public schools. There, amazingly enough, each week we used to hear each performances of the NBC Symphony Orchestra over the radio. The broadcasts came into our classrooms through the public address system and we listened while sitting at our desks.

At a distance of more than sixty years, it seems almost incredible to me now that this ever happened. And yet, it turned out to be one of the most formative influences in my life. Listening to classical music gave me a cultural resource of such importance that it has fed my soul all through the intervening decades. I will always remember with appreciation Walter Damrosch, the orchestra’s then conductor, and the far-sighted leaders of our public schools who made the performances part of our curriculum.

Of course, many other influences combined to foster my love for music as I grew up. An adopted aunt, in particular, helped by giving me a record player so that I could play operatic performances and other music for myself. She is the one who took me backstage after a Metropolitan Opera performance of La Traviata to meet the star Eleanor Steber who had been her longtime friend.

I remember with awe the diva in her dressing room, splendidly costumed and her breast still heaving after the exertions of the leading role. The experience stamped on my psyche the glamour of the opera stage and the excitement of big-time performances.

The other educational experience that has stayed with me is memorizing poetry. This practice, too, has been largely abandoned despite the almost universal testimony of those of us over a certain age who still relish its benefits.

Surprisingly, my Shakespeare professor in sophomore year at Harvard College, F. O. Matthiessen, gave us long sections of Troilus and Cressida and King Lear to memorize. I still love the passage from the second of these plays “O reason not the need / Our basest beggars are in the poorest things superfluous” and think of these lines when I see people panhandling in Harvard Square. Or the one from the infrequently performed Troilus that begins “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back / Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion.”

I treasure this legacy from a man who, it later turned out, was deeply troubled himself. In 1950 he plunged from a window in Boston’s Hotel Manger to his death many floors below.

In the long run, the fine arts prove more valuable for some of us than the pragmatic things we had to study in school. Certainly they were of greater worth than many of the dry rationalistic philosophy and theology courses I took later.

Those radio broadcasts that we elementary school students heard each week were powerful influences with lasting power. Do any public schools provide this kind of listening education for students now? Most of the young people whom I know are utterly unfamiliar with the great tradition.

And how many carry in their memories lines of great poetry such as those from Shakespeare’s plays? Not many at all, I would wager. It would surprise me to discover that any current Harvard professors were assigning memorization.

And yet last week I attended a memorial service for an eminent philosopher who died on Christmas Day of last year. One of the speakers recalled that the philosopher was fond of quoting the whole of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven,” as well as other favorite pieces. He also could recite with pleasure large swatches of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Readers will recall cultural influences from their own lives that have proven to have remarkable staying power. These are the experiences that continue to humanize us and make our later life richer in memory and current affect.

Richard Griffin

Some things should not be done late in life. Having a wisdom tooth extracted, for example.

That is what I underwent on Tuesday of last week. Let me assure you – – there have to be many better ways of celebrating Mardi Gras.

Getting out an old tooth, impacted, close to the bone and cozying up to a nerve, amounts to a first-class ordeal, I discovered. Even my surgeon, highly skilled and experienced, had a hard time with my mouth. I could see it in his eyes, only a foot away from mine. Undoubtedly, he could see the terror in mine.

Heavily Novocained or not, you don’t feel comfortable when your gum is cut away and your subterranean tooth is grabbed by steel extraction instruments. Then, when this approach does not work and the dentist has to break up the tooth by drilling it apart, that, too, does not provide highly pleasing sensations.

We human beings are said to have some 65,000 ideas float through our minds in the course of a single day. During this surgery, all but two of mine remained on hold

The first was, “When will this operation ever end?” And the second, “Which of all the horrible injuries mentioned in the pre-operative consent form are going to happen to me?” At this point, I might have gladly settled for a broken jaw.

Please understand, my dental surgeon is one of the nicest guys in the whole world and I would recommend his services to anyone. I also care about him as a friend. So I attribute the travail detailed here to the nature of my mouth and none at all to my dentist.

He ranks as the most considerate and solicitous professional you could meet. But no one has ever accused me of being normal. He himself told me, “Your bone was like concrete.”

That tooth had been encased there for more than fifty years. And, until this past autumn, it found my mouth a comfortable lodging place. Then it suddenly announced its presence by ballooning up the left side of my face.

The signs immediately before the operation were not favorable. I ran into Eric, one of the many workers who are doing macrocosmic surgery on our neighborhood by implanting an 80-foot water tank 35 feet under the street next to ours. When I told him of my destination, he looked at me and said tactfully, “You should have had it out 30 years ago.” Some kind of encouragement!

And a husband and wife, the two of them considerably older than I, were preparing to leave when I arrived in the waiting room. The husband, with the kind of detachment that allows humor, told his wife who had just had two teeth removed and was looking peaked, “You must feel lighter.”

Then I heard from a reader in Georgetown who informed me: “Mr. Griffin, you have grown older but you have not yet grown up.”  He intended it as a condemnation of my views about Dubya but I take it as a pejorative explanation of why, at my advanced age, a wisdom tooth had to be removed.

My saga represents only the latest in a long and adventurous dental history. In keeping with a firmly held resolution never to regale readers with the family’s medications nor details of my own intestinal life, I will spare you a blow- by-blow account of my mouth.

It all started badly when I got hit with a baseball when playing in the street and broke off the centermost upper front tooth. That began an inexorable series of dental reverses that has brought me to this advanced age, wounded. Root canals, extractions, crowns, whatever –  – I have drawn on a wide selection of the dental repertoire.

In recent years I have often asked dentists, “Which is going to last longer, my teeth or me?” No one yet has hazarded an answer to that question, so vital to my prospects.

Two reflections about this whole experience continue to intrigue me. First, the name “wisdom” tooth. Reportedly, it derives from the idea that the late teenage years and the early twenties mark the onset of wisdom. If you can believe that, you have truly been out of touch lately with the younger generation.

Secondly, wisdom teeth are problematic because the normal four of them try to squeeze in to a space where only 28 can fit. Thus, they are a sign of evolution, the way human beings have changed through the millennia, losing some of the needs for fiercely chewing into uncooked meat. How intriguing to think of oneself as descended from creatures who exhibited almost as much ferocity as we do.

By the way, as of this writing, I am recovering nicely from the ravages of extraction. Friends and associates, better be warned: soon I will be able to open my mouth again, all the way.

Richard Griffin

“I have been encountering strangers all over the country who have taken up the issues of the book.” So says James Carroll, author of “Constantine’s Sword: the Church and the Jews: a History.” This work has recently climbed to number ten on the leading list of best sellers, an indication that Carroll is not overstating the level of interest it has stirred.

Though the author is a longtime friend and I cannot be expected to take a neutral stance toward his work, I rate “Constantine’s Sword” among the most stimulating books I have ever read. Almost every page features findings and insights that forced me to think more deeply. And, at the same time, the author’s polished style makes the book a pleasure to read despite the demands that the often complex material makes on readers.

Carroll himself makes the story he tells very personal as he weaves into his narrative events from his own earlier life and that of the family in which he grew up. In this way he shows how he himself, like other Catholics of his time and place, took in misconceptions about Christian history and developed attitudes prejudicial toward Jewish people.

Rather than trying to summarize a book of unusually wide scope and one full of details culled from a 2000-year history, I will instead focus on what the work means to the author and also to me, two friends who share something of the same experience.

For James Carroll the book represents a new venture and an ambitious one indeed. In embarking on a work of history, he was moving into a literary genre different from the ones in which he has made his considerable reputation as a writer. Earlier he had written nine novels plus a memoir  “An American Requiem” that won a National Book Award in 1996.

“Constantine’s Sword” required a great deal of research, as hundreds of footnotes attest. With the help of two research assistants, Carroll read and consulted an astoundingly wide range of books and periodicals. For a person without long experience in this kind of scholarship, this study represents a considerable achievement.

Undoubtedly, Carroll knew that he would face criticism from professional historians. These academics could be counted on for negative appraisals about at least some of his work; some would probably resent a writer outside the field doing history at all.

In fact, criticism from that source has already appeared: “Commonweal” carried a long review written by a University of Virginia historian who blasted the book and called it “an effort not to understand but to use history to advance a tendentious agenda.”

Carroll also knew that some leaders in his own church would probably brand the book as contrary to official teaching, if not downright heretical. At the least, they would not be ready to accept widespread criticism of the popes and other office holders. The author also knew that he would not be writing a perfect book, one free from mistakes or erroneous interpretations of theology, history, and scripture.

Nonetheless Carroll moved bravely ahead in crafting this work of conscience and he remained convinced that writing it would help advance the cause of justice, understanding, and peace. Some would call him “anti-Catholic” but he had confidence that ultimately he was doing the church an important service.

What must have been most difficult of all was the subtle threat to his own religious stance. My friend acknowledges that writing this book did indeed lead him into a personal crisis of faith. Detailing the awful record of his church’s treatment of the Jews deeply troubled his confidence in the religious tradition in which he grew up and, in his first career, functioned as a priest. As he writes in the Epilogue, “My faith is forever shaken, and I will always tremble.”

In a lesser  way, I too have felt shaken by the history that my friend Jim recounts so dramatically. Reading about hatred of Jews as perpetrated by both officials in the Church and ordinary members I found deeply disturbing. Often I felt ashamed of what was done in the name of religion to humiliate people on the basis of their religious or ethnic heritage.

Granted that I personally was not involved in events that happened centuries before my birth, still I am part of an institution responsible for a large share of it. Like the book’s author, I too served as a priest: both of us worked in campus ministry during the same era. We were thus official representatives of a community of faith that has a record shockingly flawed.

And, yet, I recognize that this community is made up of human beings. Like my friend Jim, I see us as loved by God who recognizes what it means to be human rather than divine, imperfect not absolute. Ultimately, I feel myself part of a community capable of both heroic acts of virtue and also of troubling ignorance and horrendous betrayal of ideals.

Richard Griffin

A friend and former colleague of mine has just been made (or to use the proper word “created”) a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the first person ever named to that position who has been to the movies with me. For fear this seem to you a dubious distinction you should know that he has some other qualifications for being named to the College of Cardinals.

For one thing, he has distinguished himself as a theologian, having written some twenty books on  various subjects in this field. In fact, he has written so much that he had better stop soon. Otherwise he faces the acute danger of knowing altogether too much about God.

The new cardinal’s  name is Avery Dulles and, as a Jesuit priest, he is currently a professor at Fordham University in New York City. If you are of a certain age, the name Dulles may resound in you: his father was Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration and his uncle was CIA director.

If you are older still, you may remember his great-uncle, Robert Lansing, who was Secretary of State in the Wilson administration. And, if you have broken all known records for longevity, you will remember yet another high office holder in the line of Avery Dulles’ ancestors, John Watson Foster, the Secretary of State in the Benjamin Harrison regime. If John Paul II has any sense of history, he will promptly appoint the new cardinal Vatican Secretary of State.

Another distinction of the new appointee is that he is 82 years of age, one year older than John Paul himself. Unfortunately for him, he will thus be ineligible for the suspenseful and heady experience of electing the next Bishop of Rome. But he can wear the regalia and act cardinalatial all he wants.

In his first press conference, this cardinal-elect wondered aloud how the new honor will change his daily life. One of the questions he asked was whether he now should wear red socks. If he does so, clearly he will be required to move from New York to Boston where people wearing red socks play ball. Of course people interested in ecclesiastical preferment have been playing ball at the Vatican for some two thousand years.

As his comment about the color of his socks indicates, the new man is taking the sudden interest in him on the part of the press quite lightheartedly. Though he has now joined the great American celebrity system, he stands close enough to God that his head will not be turned. After all, he has tasted other pleasures in life: for example, he saw a Republican become president last month.

I asked one of Father Dulles’ Jesuit colleagues, Father X,  how he felt about the appointment. Not without a cackle, the colleague said he would need time to get reconciled to it because he is convinced the Vatican made a mistake. They meant to choose Father X himself but somehow their record keeping system confused him with Father Dulles. How’s that for infallibility?

Avery Dulles’ personal history shows him to be an extraordinary human being. After all, he first found God in Cambridge, at Harvard College of all places. The presence of the deity at that institution was then, and some would say even now, rare indeed. But that’s where the future cardinal discovered that there was a God even greater than Harvard itself.

I pray that my friend’s health remain vigorous for at least the next three weeks. That’s because, if Avery Dulles does not make it to February 21st, he will go to heaven without ever having actually become a cardinal. The same holds true if John Paul II dies before that date. Viva il  Papa!, as the Italians say (Long live the Pope).

A different kind of concern comes from some carping liberals among Catholic ecclesiastics. They note that, in the last few years, Father Dulles has been moving further and further to the right ideologically. In fact some have even seen this shift as a factor in his selection as cardinal.

It is hard for me to believe that politics of this sort could have had any such role but perhaps I have not shed all my youthful naiveté. In any event, if he is leaning rightward, he will find himself in good company in the Washington D.C. of today.

Think what might have happened if I had played my own cards more adroitly. Would not I now be buying new socks, outfitting myself with prelatial regalia, and reserving tickets for travel to Rome? Clearly, I left the Jesuits too soon, before the Vatican turned toward my former community for a cardinal candidate. I could have looked forward to what the Latins call otium cum dignitate (a dignified leisure) in my old age. Instead, I have to live out my days without any such distinction.

And now I bet you that Avery Dulles will never go to the movies with me again.

Richard Griffin