AtDDtA1: A Detachment of Not Necesarily Helpful Angels

[Dave Monroe]

"In the Stockyards, workers coming off shift, overwhelmingly of the
Roman faith, able to detach from earth and blood for a few precious
seconds, looked up at the airship in wonder, imagining a detachment of
not necessarily helpful angels."
(AtD, Pt. I, Ch. 2, p. 10)


"overwhelmingly of the Roman faith"

No records have been kept or census taken which would show the
Catholic population according to race in Illinois, but the Catholics
of Irish birth or descent far outnumber all others. Then in their
order come the Germans, Poles and other Slavic people, Italians,
Bohemians, and French. Chicago was made an episcopal see by Pope
Gregory XVI, and Right Rev. William Quarter, a native of Ireland, was
appointed as its first bishop....

In 1880 Chicago became an archdiocese, the Most Reverend Patrick A.
Feehan being its first archbishop, during whose administration schools
were built to accommodate 60,000 pupils.... The Archdiocese of Chicago
now comprises the Counties of Cook (including Chicago), Lake, Du Page,
Kankakee, Will, and Grundy, and in Catholic population is next to the
Archdiocese of New York ....

... The first Catholic immigrants to Illinois were the French, and
these immigrants were relatively few in their numbers. The first great
tide of Catholic immigration was in 1846, 1847, and 1848, when the
Irish famine was at its height. These Irish Catholic immigrants
settled in great numbers in the northern part of Illinois and
especially Chicago. The tide of Irish Catholic immigration flowed to
Chicago until recent years. From 1841 until 1850 there was a large
German Catholic immigration to Illinois. Since 1890 there has been in
Chicago a great influx of Polish, Lithuanian, and Italian
Catholics....

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07653a.htm

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago

The history of Roman Catholicism in Chicago has been shaped by the
wider economic, political, and social realities of the city and
metropolitan region. Conversely, the Church too has had a decisive
impact on the shape of the city by its ownership of urban property,
its provision of social services, and the influence of its teachings
on the men and women who live in Chicago....

[...]

...  In 1880 Rome designated the Diocese of Chicago an archdiocese,
raising it to preeminence among all dioceses in the region and
establishing its bishop as an archbishop.

Ethnic Expansion: 1879–1915

Two bishops presided over this era of recovery and growth, Patrick A.
Feehan and James Edward Quigley. The matrix of Catholic development in
this epoch was the burgeoning industrialization of the city and the
heavily Catholic immigration that provided its workforce. As Southern
and Eastern Europeans augmented the existing core of Irish and German
Catholics, both Feehan and Quigley adopted a policy of ethnic
accommodation that had a significant impact on the development of
Chicago's neighborhoods.... Chicago's urban parishes flourished as an
important spiritual, cultural, and educational component of Chicago's
life.

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1088.html


"a detachment of not necessarily helpful angels"

Cf., e.g., ...

   "But out there at the horizon, out near the burnished edge of the
world, who are those visitors standing ... these robed
figures—perhaps, at this distance, hundreds of miles tall—their faces,
serene, unattached, like the Buddha's, bending over the sea,
impassive, indeed, as the Angel that stood over Lübeck during the Palm
Sunday raid, come that day neither to destroy nor to protect, but to
bear witness to a game of seduction." (GR, Pt. II, pp. 214-5)

http://uu.cx/pynchon/angels.html

"There is an Aggadic tradition from around the 4th century that Isaac,
at the moment Abraham was about to sacrifice him on Moriah, saw the
antechambers of the Throne. For the working mystic, having the vision
and passing through the chambers one by one, is terrible and complex.
The angels at the doorways will try to con you, threaten you, play all
manner of cruel practical jokes, to turn you aside." (GR, Pt. IV, pp.
749-50)

"But it was not a star, it was falling, a bright angel of death." (GR,
Pt. IV, p. 760)

Angels

"graceful as a wing" 39; angel's-eye view, 54; snow angels, 57;
"Destroying Angel" 93; Katje's "questing shoulders like wings" 97;
"windmill known as 'The Angel'" 106, 536; starlings on radar, 112;
"the Angels sing new songs" 134; "mock-angel singing" 135; "days of
angelic visit" 145; Basher St. Blaise's angel, 146, 151-52 (aka Lübeck
angel, 214, 217); "sudden angel, thermodynamic surprise" 143; "Your
wings...oh, Leni, your wings..." 162; "as the Angel swooped in" 164;
"hark the herald angels" 177; "Jeremy will take her like the Angel
itself" 177; "She has swept with her wings another life" 218; "Richard
Halliburton...a failed angel" 266; "the Angel who tried to destroy us
in Südwest" 328; "star-blotting Moslem angels" 341; "Tenth-Elegy
angel" 341; "Angels and sanctions" 355; "to bring down steel angels of
exaltation" 437; "like the Archangels" 464; Bianca's "shoulderblades
rising like wings" 470; "the windmill called 'The Angel'" 536; "the
angel [the Erdschweinhöhlers] have hoped for" 672; "Angel Thanatz"
673; "functions of Moslem angels" 705; "Angels Melchidael, Yahoel,
Anatiel, and the great Metatron" 734; "some angel...watching us at our
many perversities" 746; "under a sentence of death whose deep beauty
the angel has never been close to" 746; "angels at the doorways" 750;
"a bright angel of death" 760; See also Metatron

http://hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/a.html

http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=A