107 Days

 

Politicians write their memoirs. That is just one of the things that they do - sometimes when their careers are already over, sometimes as one of their many maneuvers to keep one's career going. Which of these applies to this account by Kamala Harris of her unsuccessful 2024 presidential campaign remains to be seen. With most such books, the first question is, obviously, whether - apart from mere curiosity - there is any good reason to read it. Whatever its faults, whatever its author's faults, this campaign memoir - 107 Days (Simon and Schuster), co-written with Geraldine Brooks - probably meets that minimal test and is worth the read, if only for one more inside take on the unprecedented character of the 2024 campaign, assuming one is interested in the daily ebb and flow of campaigns. That said, its day-by-day chronological structure does leave much to be desired stylistically. It actually may make the account more boring instead of more interesting.

Without even opening her book, most readers have already heard one thing from the media coverage of it - that Tim Walz was not her preferred choice for running mate, that Pete Buttigieg was her preference, but that she went with Walz as the more cautious choice.  This reflected (depending on the reader's preferred interpretation) either a left-wing Democratic obsession with identity politics or a traditional American awareness of the need to balance the ticket. Either way, it highlights her caution. Since she lost anyway, one might argue, perhaps this would have been a good occasion to throw caution away! In any case, apart from the generally accepted exception fo 1960, when has a vice presidential candidate really helped the head of the ticket?

I am not sure how much else is new that we actually learn from her book. We do learn, but should not be surprised, that she harbors resentment against the Biden inner circle, the same people who have elsewhere borne much of the blame for keeping Biden in the race beyond his sell-by date. Most of her comments reflect her resentments of Biden's inner circle, although there is some criticism of the President himself. Of course, this is often the lot of a vice president. It is a dumb job, another poorly thought-out legacy of our 18th-century constitutional framing. It may make sense for her to want to claim, as she does, "that there is only one apprenticeship for president of the United States, and that is being vice president." That claim has to be both theoretically nonsensical and historically proven false many times. Rarely have our better presidents been vice presidents beforehand!

At the same time, she genuinely believed she was the person best positioned to pick up Biden's fallen standard. It is fair, I think, to criticize Biden for not having gotten out of the race earlier - early enough to enable a better process for the selection of his successor, who might or might not have been Harris, who might even have been a better prepared candidate Harris. Who knows? But it is hard to fault Harris for taking advantage of the opportunity that fell to her. She would, however, soon experience what Jill Biden warned: "You're about to see how horrible the world is."

In any close race, it is impossible to single out any one issue as ultimately decisive. That said, one of Harris's principal problems, from the start, was how to deal with Biden's unpopularity. In the early days of the campaign, she pointedly praised the President in the first pert of her speech. But David Plouffe warned her: "People hate Joe Biden."

Whether that was fair or. not, whether the desire for her to separate herself from Biden was realistic or not, what Democrats really do have to confront at some point is widen debacle says about the party, its leaders, their communication and decision making, all sorts of issues that this tragic chain of events has highlighted. By their own admission (or, at least, their rhetoric) their primary job was not so much to get Biden re-elected as to prevent Trump from being re-elected. And in that the party failed dramatically.

By the distorted campaign standards of the 21st century, 107 days was probably simply too little time. Even so, there was a lot of excitement about her campaign, and it is worth asking whether her loss was inevitable and whether that ephemeral initial enthusiasm could have been more effectively translated into something more lasting.

All of which brings us to the deeper question which Harris' book never really answers, which is how and why the Democrats got themselves into the position over the past several years in which they have simply ceased to seem credible to so many Americans - and what, if anything, can de done to change that. It may not be fair to expect Harris alone to answer that, but the truly abiding lesson of the 2024 campaign is that that is the question that matters most for the party and, by extension, for the country.

Mussolini: Just a Century Ago

 

Mussolini: Son of the Century is an Italian TV series (M. Il figlio del secolo), based on a 2018 novel of that name by Antonio Scurati, which focuses on the early political career of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), the founder of the Italian fascist party, who was Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy and virtual Dictator from 1922 through 1943. The series follows Mussolini's early (post Word War I, post socialist) career from his founding of the Italian Fascist Party in 1919 up to the assassination of the famous socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti in 1924 and its immediate aftermath.

The series has eight episodes. So far, four have been shown. The first follows Mussolini's immediate post-war trajectory, when he was still a journalist but had left Socialism behind in order to support Italy's entry into the war in 1915. Italy emerged from World War I on the winning side, but had little to show for it, what was accordingly called la vittoria mutilata ("the mutilated victory"). The episode highlights aspects of Mussolini's tempestuous personal and family life, the disordered state of post-war Italian social and political life, and Mussolini's rivalry with war-hero and poet Gabriel D'Annunzio, who in 1919 illegally occupied and briefly ruled the disputed city of Fiume. Episode Two follows Mussolini's change of tactic, leading to his entry into Parliament. Episodes three and four follow the Fascists' successful exploitation of social and class conflict in the early 1920s. Episode four, which just aired today, begins with Prime Minister Facta holding a self-congratulatory party during which he expresses his belief that he can manage the Fascists. Meanwhile, Mussolini is readying his followers for the "March on Rome," the great bluff that to Mussolini's eventual appointment by the King as head of government in October 1922. The episode highlights how phoney the "March on Rome" actually was, with Mussolini prepared to flee to Switzerland if it failed, and his dependence for success on assumptions, which ultimately proved correct, about the impotence of the Italian state, which could likely have defeated the movement had it had the nerve to try to do so. 

Presumably, the subsequent episodes will follow his gradual consolidation of almost complete power over the next two years, culminating in the death of the socialist parliamentarian Giacomo Matteotti (which Mussolini will be allowed to get away with) and the establishment of the dictatorship.

As appears increasingly fashionable, many of the scenes seem to have been filmed in the dark, which imposes a certain degree of visual burden on the audience, who (unless they are Italian speakers) must also follow the subtitles.That said, it is well filmed, and worth the challenge of following its violent, but not always completely clear, trajectory. (Some previous knowledge of 1920s Italian history seems to be presumed.) The program also gives greater dramatic prominence to Rachele Mussolini than some other accounts do, which is a welcome addition.

History does not repeat itself. But this dramatization of Italy exactly a century ago illustrates how precarious liberal government inherently becomes when it fails (and is widely perceived to fail) to resolve pressing social problems, especially social inequality and increasing precarity, especially when the opposite was widely expected and desired (in Italy's case, thanks to victory in the world war). The interwar period of the early 20th century was characterized by this widely experienced failure of liberalism and democracy and a therefore unsurprisingly widely shared search for various types of alternatives. of which Italian fascism was one model, which particularly presented itself as a viable alternative to Soviet Bolshevism. The program dramatizes Mussolini's flamboyance, a veritable "strongman," but also highlights his banality and that of his followers, highlighting how little it actually takes to destroy liberal institutions in the absence of very good leadership - something neither the liberal politicians nor the King seemed to be able to manage.

Meanwhile, with a surprising and somewhat comical lack of subtlety, the program even portrays Mussolini, in an aside to the audience at his moment of triumph, saying (in English, no less), "Make Italy great again."

Of course, we know where all this was eventually going to lead, something obviously none of the participants in the actual history of the 1920s - neither the King, nor the Duce, nor Mussolini's followers, nor his ineffective opponents - could anticipate. (Presumably, the King thought that in appointing Mussolini as Prime Minister he was just doing something he had done many times before and would do again in the future.) Had the King and other politicians had the gift of foresight, perhaps they might have managed to find some vestiges of political leadership among themselves to avert Italy's impending tragedy. That tragedy was not inevitable, but was the direct result of the failure of Italy's constitutional checks and balances, thanks to the personal failures of those whose office it was to uphold them.

The Church in New York Celebrates Its Immigrant Past and Present

Yesterday at the main Mass, New York's famous Saint Patrick's Cathedral dedicated a major new addition to the cathedral's interior, the largest artwork commissioned in the cathedral’s 146-year history and the first since the massive bronze doors were installed at the cathedral's Fifth Avenue entrance in 1949. It is a 21-feet high, multi-panel mural by artist Adam Cvijanovic, titled What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding, which celebrates the history of immigration in New York City and the role of the Church in the city's development. It recalls the 1879 Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Knock, Ireland, which occurred in the same year as the original dedication of the cathedral. The mural depicts the succession of 19th and 20th-century immigrants to New York, more contemporary immigrants, and other prominent New York figures like St. Kateri Tekakwitha, Pierre Toussaint, Dorothy Day, Al Smith, and Archbishop John Hughes.     

“I want people to be able to see themselves in it,” the artist Adam Cvijanovic has said. Looking at it yesterday for the first time, I did see a lot of myself iand many others in it - in its depiction of generations of immigrants who found refuge in this city and a spiritual home in our Church.

True Stewardship

 

Among fictional New Testament characters, the steward in the parable we just heard [Luke 16:1-13] has always been particularly popular. “To did I am not able, to beg I am ashamed,” he used to say in the nicer translation with which those of my generation were once familiar. He is commonly called “the unjust steward,” but his master commended him for how he acted. Jesus seems to propose him as a model for the disciples – presumably not for squandering his master’s property, but for his prudence, for what in classical philosophical language would be called his practical wisdom.

Jesus’ point seems to be that, faced with the greatest crisis of his life, the steward focused on the clear goal of guaranteeing his long-term security and acted accordingly, forgoing the commission that he might have received as steward, in order to ingratiate himself with those who could guarantee him such security. He is a model for having his priorities in order and focusing single-mindedly on his mission, and for his readiness to sacrifice short-term gains for long-term security. Jesus clearly expects no less of us!

Jesus’ parable suggests that negotiating our way through the ongoing challenges of ordinary life requires intelligent practical judgments. These in turn require the virtue that is always listed first among the classical cardinal virtues – prudence.

On the one hand, one of the most radical challenges of Christianity, humanly speaking, is the notion that one cannot serve both God and mammon. Our ultimate commitment must be to God’s kingdom, to which all other claims – family, friends, career, country – must be subordinate. On the other hand, even if my family, friends, career, country, etc. are all transitory, still they describe where I am right now, - living, growing, and becoming, for better or for worse, the person I will remain for all eternity.

And so, already in the 1st century, St. Paul - in his 1st letter to Timothy [1 Timothy 2:1-8] – connected the earthly and eternal dimensions of our lives, forever after forcing us to do the same. I ask, Paul wrote to Timothy, that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity.

How utopian that sounds in our troubled present time - a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity

Of course, even without Saint Paul, the ordinary experience of life itself forces us to figure out how to relate the transitory and the eternal. In the words of one early Christian writer [Tertullian, Apologeticus, 31]: When the Empire is shaken, all of its parts are shaken also, hence even though we stand outside its tumults, we are caught in its misfortunes. Not much has changed since then. We live in a world full of tumults and misfortunes! Hence, he too promoted prayer for Emperors, their ministers, for the condition of the world, for peace everywhere, and for the delaying of the end [39]. And so too must we! If a fully human life requires social commitment and political participation, then our prayer and worship must somehow acknowledge this.

In the Old Testament, when Israel was exiled in a foreign land, God gave his people this advice through the prophet Jeremiah: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses to dwell in; plant gardens and eat their fruits. … Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the Lord, for upon its welfare depends your own [Jeremiah 29:4-7].

What Jeremiah calls the welfare of the city – peace, prosperity, security, justice, in short what we call the common good– all that is the purpose of social and political life. That in turn requires citizens – engaged participants, who are not passive spectators in the story of our national life, living as if life were just some short ferry boat ride, not noticing or caring how the boat is being steered and whether or not all the passengers are adequately equipped with life jackets. On the contrary, how the boat is being steered and whether all the passengers are adequately equipped must be among our preeminent priorities.

In a society which has witnessed a dramatic decline in civic community life in recent years, as Americans have become increasingly isolated and mutually suspicious, we are challenged today to rediscover the basic human task to step beyond our private space, to take responsibility for more than just ourselves, and to be accountable for and to one another. Then we may hope, as Saint Paul did, to lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity.

 

Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, September 21, 2025.

Task

In 2021, Brad Inglesby created HBO's amazingly successful Mare of Easttown. Not a sequel exactly, Inglesby's latest HBO hit, Task (the first two of seven Sunday-night episodes of which have already aired), is set in a similar Delaware County "working class" environment of natural beauty, old-fashioned homes, which house struggling, often dysfunctional families with limited opportunities, little hope, and lots of personal and familial grief. Indeed, Inglesby seems to traffic primarily in unrelenting bleakness and grief, and does it well, pulling his audience into a real empathy with his complex characters and their very unfair world.

Task  stars Mark Ruffalo as an FBI agent, Tom Brandis, who heads a four-person task force to investigate a series of crimes committed by two (sometimes three) masked men robbing drug "trap" houses. Brandis is an ex-priest, whose family life has been shattered by a recent tragedy, the murder of his wife by his mentally ill adopted son, Ethan, and the ongoing toll this has taken on him and his daughters. In Mare, the title character was still grieving the suicide of her son, fighting for custody of her grandson, and generally trying to navigate the complexities of her family situation, while also doing her detective job. The two series are set in the same gritty, depressing, small-town world, although I think Mare and her world seemed overall to be doing a better job of holding their lives together in what was still a genuine local community, however wounded. The absence of any comparable community in Task only adds to the show's intended bleakness. (Mare herself was something of a local hero because of her role on a championship basketball game decades earlier. Tom, although presumably he was not always so self-isolated, seems to have nothing like that in terms of a comparable degree of rootedness in the local community.)

Unlike Mare, where the criminals don't get unmasked until we have gotten to like most of them, Task's principal criminals are identified early (although there may yet be more, for example, a possible informer within the law enforcement community). Brandis' principal criminal opposite is Robbie Prendergast (Tom Pelphrey), a garbage worker, who together with his partner Cliff Broward (Raul Castillo) has been robbing the "trap" houses, operated by a drug-dealing motorcycle gang, "The Dark Hearts." To do this, Robbie and Cliff have had help from some inside informant, "MZ." 

Meanwhile, like Tom, Robbie too is a single father (his partner having abandoned him a year earlier). So Robbie and his two children live with his 21-year old niece Maeve (Emilila Jones), whose father Billy had been involved in the motorcycle gang and was murdered by the group's current leader. Robbie is presented as a somewhat kind-hearted, not very bright guy, living very much in the moment and not planning particularly well for the consequences of his actions. Hence, when one of their robberies goes very badly at the end of the first episode, leaving three gang members and the robbers' third partner dead, Robbie kidnaps the child of those he has just murdered and bings him home, which now obviously further endangers everyone in his household in addition to himself and Cliff.

Meanwhile, the Brandis household is in turmoil over Tom's daughter Emily's inclination to speak at Ethan's imminent sentencing. Tom's daughters are at odds, and he himself is internally torn, missing his wife but also missing his son. Although ostensibly having abandoned religion and regularly now drinking too much, he clearly is still struggling spiritually. At one point, he says to his family, "It's easy to talk about forgiveness when it's not your loss." Such statements and the visit from one of his priest friends in the first episode suggest that faith issues will not be ignored in this series, much as such struggles were also portrayed in Mare (explicitly highlighted there through the characters of the priest and the deacon). It is noteworthy that Brad Inglesby himself speaks of having had relatives who were priests, one of whom left the priesthood.

Wanted (Maybe): A Democratic Republic

"A republic, if you can keep it," was what Benjamin Franklin supposedly said to Elizabeth Willing Powel to describe the form of government produced by the Constitutional Convention, which concluded on this day, Sepetember 17, in 1787 - 238 years ago today.

A "republic" was a recognizable political concept, and it certainly did not mean a "democracy," although it could include some democratic features. To the founders - rich men of property, fearful of the majority gaining power - "democracy" was a problematic concept. As a practical matter, while a New England Town Meeting maybe could function as a direct "democracy," that was obviously not possible on the continental scale that the new nation would encompass. As a philosophical matter, "democracy" had long been maligned - at least since Plato and Aristotle - as a degenerate form of government. What attracted the founders was some version of the classical idea of a "mixed constitution," as theorized by Aristotle and Polybius and as was exemplified, more or less, in the ancient Roman Republic.

Since then, as the idea of "democracy" has become more attractive to larger segments of American society - however incompatible with capitalism and limited by liberalism - a sporadic struggle has been undertaken over the centuries to come closer to "democracy," understood as a society in which the governed have increased agency in their government. America in the Jacksonian era, with its widening suffrage, was more democratic (if not necessarily better governed) than it had been before. The post-Civil War United States was more democratic than its pre-Civil War version. The 20th century saw several leaps toward greater democracy - the 17th Amendment, the 19th Amendment, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.

The 21st century, starting with the Supreme Court's usurpation of the election of 2000 and its subsequent attacks on the Voting Rights Act has seen a growing democratic deficit. There is no likelihood of any major changes in constitutional structure any time soon. But what would it mean for the U.S. to become more democratic? To become truly a "democratic republic" at last? As Tocqueville and others have always understood, "democracy" and some degree of equality go together. What does that mean for American capitalism, which has become more, not less, rapacious in this century? And what of other constraining American ideologies - like liberalism, the point of which is to set certain limits to what a democratic government may legally do?

Obviously, a large modern country can only be a "democracy" in a representational manner. so one obvious line of inquiry is: What current representational structures are fit for democratic purpose, and which are not? A larger (and much less gerrymandered) House of Representatives might be a good start. As for the absurdity that is the Senate, many of the founders themselves recognized the representational anomaly and undesirability of the Senate, but accepted it as a necessary compromise to get the smaller states to join the Union - just as they compromised on slavery to keep the southern states in the new country. As The Federalist 62 acknowledged: "it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but 'of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable'.'' Eventually, of course, the U.S. got rid of slavery, but we are still stuck with the Senate, which, with our larger modern population, is even more unfortunately absurd now than it was then.

One way to approach the issue of representation is to look at the example of other countries that are or aspire to be democratic, which would include almost all the modern European countries. The most successful at "democracy" are also monarchies, "mixed constitutions" in the best sense. (The survival of their monarchical institutions is in most cases a reflection of their being on the winning side of 20th-century wars and conflicts.) But even those that have lost their monarchies have mostly successfully developed institutions which enhance both stability and democracy. Apart from the anomalous and complicated case of Fifth Republic France, they are all parliamentary systems, which have proven more effective at representing their nations' diverse constituencies than our 18th-century presidential model. Many of them also employ some form of proportional representation, which typically produces a less distorted representation of competing parties and interests than our antiquated first-past-the post single-member district system does.

In any modern society, it is the executive power that undoubtedly matters most, that, to a large extent, sets the agenda and implements it. This is one of the anti-political (and, hence, anti-republican) consequences of modernity. Personally, I have no doubt that parliamentary systems, with their traditional ethos of "responsible government," that is, an executive that is accountable to the people through the legislature, is a far better system than our presidential model. For better or for worse, however, the U.S is stuck with a president-centered system.

That said, the founders feared most the ascent of a populist demagogue, a Caesar. Unlike some of our contemporaries who worry about the real and imagined excesses of "woke" professors, the founders feared not professors but the very real danger of despotism associated with executive power. Hence, they insulated the election of the president as much as possible from popular participation. Inevitably, this proved unworkable and, by the Jacksonian era, the electoral college had become a filter which reflected the popular vote, albeit in a very distorted way. Those distortions can claim credit for the character of our two-party system and the style of modern presidential campaigns. Those distortions have also - tragically twice in this century - resulted in the election of a president whose electoral opponent had won more popular votes than he did. The founders might not have minded, but most modern citizens find such a situation increasingly unacceptable. If we must have a presidential system (which we must assume), then the only viable option for a serious democratic republic would be to replace the present electoral college with a more modern, more honestly representational electoral system.

None of that, of course, can serve as a guarantee against despotism, which ironically the original conception of the electoral college was meant to protect us from. To protect against despotism, "democracy" must be constrained by liberalism, the ideology of limitations on government. Liberalism does not prescribe a weak government, but it limits government by taking certain subjects - such as speech, religion, and the rule of law - off the table and out of the political arena. Unfortunately, this is an area where the constitutional system exhibits such great weakness and fragility, since it depends so much on the mores of the demos.

All of which, of course, brings us back to our old friend Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), the great 19th-century observer and theorist of American democracy. Tocqueville worried about populist despotism and famously highlighted the important part played by American religion in holding society together. He also famously praised American associationism which, while quite characteristic of 19th-century American society, has since much diminished - as has religion. The result is now an American people who are more individualistic, isolated, and mutually suspicious, characteristics which Tocqueville and subsequent theorists have recognized as more conducive to populist despotism than to republican "democracy."

To Be Continued.

Behold, the Wood of the Cross

 

Twenty-four years ago today, this church was filled to overflowing, following the terrorist attack which we had experienced in this city just three days before. That was the only time when I have ever seen this great church so completely full, filled to capacity, filled as it was originally designed to be.  But, on that unforgettable September Friday, when we assembled that day for Mass, we did what the Church always does on September 14. We celebrated the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the symbol of our salvation. As our first pastor Servant of God Isaac Hecker expressed it, The only bridge to heaven is over the cross.  The gates of paradise are only opened with the key of the cross. 

Historically, this feast commemorates the dedication, on September 13, 335, of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem – built by the Roman Emperor Constantine over the traditionally recognized sites of Christ’s crucifixion and of his burial and resurrection. The next day, the relic of the True Cross (which had been discovered by Constantine’s mother, the Empress Saint Helena in 320) was publicly venerated in the new basilica. Eventually, September 14 became the feast celebrated today throughout the Universal Church.

On one level, this feast was a celebration of Christianity’s triumph over Roman paganism. The date for the dedication of the Jerusalem Basilica may have been chosen to counteract the anniversary of the dedication of the Temple of Jupiter in Rome - ironically now the site of united Italy’s 1911 monument to King Victor Emmanuel II, a monument to the triumph of modern secularism over religion and the power of the Church.  Such short-term triumphs come and go, part of our perennial political noise and our overwhelming obsession with power, domination, and control.

In contrast, however, what we celebrate today is Christ’s triumph over our sad history of cosmic evil and human sinfulness  – now transformed, once and for all, through the triumph of Christ’s cross.

Evil and sin do not happen simply by accident – and neither did the cross. It didn’t just happen to Jesus one day, like some inexplicable misfortune – like various sufferings and setbacks, which, when they happen in our own lives, we sometimes all too glibly refer to as “crosses.” Christ’s cross was a direct consequence of his confrontation with worldly power, domination, and control and became the means by which he overcame cosmic evil and human sin.

In Jesus, the cross has become our doorway to salvation. A dreaded instrument of disgraceful death, the cross is now, thanks to Jesus, our gateway to freedom and new life, a triumphant sign of glory. And that is why we celebrate the Cross. As Saint Augustine said in a sermon somewhere around the year 400, You’re a Christian, you carry on your forehead the cross of Christ [Sermon 302, 3].

In the familiar story we just heard, [Numbers 21:4b-9], God punished his perpetually complaining people with serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. But, when Moses interceded on the people’s behalf, he was instructed to make an image of a serpent, mounted on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at it, he lived.

Like the people in the desert, we experience all sorts of sufferings and setbacks and are prone to discouragement. But the mystery of the cross invites us to see our situation differently. It invites us to turn away from our obsessive, dead-end focus on ourselves, and to turn instead to Christ – to delight, as Saint Augustine said in that same sermon, not in the sign of the wood, but in the sign of the one hanging on it. 

The mystery of the cross invites us to turn away once and for all from our obsessive, dead-end focus on ourselves – from both our constant competition for power, wealth, status, and whatever else seems to excite us, and from the seemingly endless sufferings and setbacks that continue to break our hearts - and to turn instead to Christ, so that we may journey through the desert of this treacherous life with hope instead of fear, under the sign of the cross, which alone can conquer in our conflict-ridden, war-torn, terrorized, and religiously and politically polarized world.

Homily for the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, September 14, 2025.

Photo: Crucifix which was originally over the altar of the chapel of the Paulist Novitiate, Oak Ridge, NJ.

 

Downton Abbey - The End

 

Since its first appearance on British and American TV almost 15 years ago, Downton Abbey, created and co-written by Lord Julian Fellowes, has mesmerized modern audiences, most of whom have no living memory of the era and way of life it portrays. After six memorable seasons, taking the Crawley dynasty from 1912 through World War I and into the 1920s, the series followed up with two full-length movies. Now a third movie, set in 1930 - Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale - has been released to bring the saga to its final glorious close.

The world around us is violent, frightening, and depressing. Julian Fellowes, however, has continued to offer us alternative images of other worlds (actually the same world in other - comparably problematic but different - periods). The TV series, set on the fictional Yorkshire estate (portrayed by the real Highclere Castle) of the earls of Grantham, depicted the "upstairs-downstairs" lives of the Crawley family and their household servants, as they navigated their personal and family lives, against the background of a dramatically changing British society. It was one of the most watched television series on both sides of the Atlantic, and is considered to have been the most successful British period drama since the 1981 television serial of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. The TV series and its two film sequels have now come to a grand finale in this final movie.

Fellowes is also the creator of the spectacular HBO series The Gilded Age, which has just completed its third season. In that season, set in New York moneyed society in the mid-18880s, Bertha Russell struck a blow against society's ban on divorced women. In Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, however, that ban is still very real in early 1930's Britain, where Lady Mary Crawley's second marriage has ended in divorce. (Presumably, we the audience are intended to view Lady Mary's difficulties from within a 21st century sensibility that favors divorce, or at least regards it as a private matter of minor consequence.)

Personally, I was sad to see Lady Mary's marriage end, but Julian Fellowes has never been one to give his characters easily happy endings (even if they do all get authentically happy endings at the series' end and now at the movie's end).

Lady's Mary's successful navigation through the troubled sea of social opprobrium brought about by her divorce is the symbolic leitmotif that permeates this saga of our familiar and beloved characters as they close chapters in their lives and (presumably) move forward to starting new chapters. In the end, multiple chapters have been closed, and we are invited to envision new futures for our familiar and beloved characters (which will sadly never be portrayed on screen). In particular, Lord and Lady Grantham, Mr. and Mrs. Carson, Mr. and Mrs. Mason, Mr. and Mrs. Parker, Mr. and Mrs. Molesley, Mr. and Mrs. Bates are all happily (albeit with some nostalgic sadness) moving forward to starting new chapters in their long lives.

A nice touch at the end is a nostalgic moment of retrospective reverie in which Lady Mary remembers Matthew and Sybill, and, of course, Violet. It is a nice way to end a long and deeply touching, ultimately very human story, which ultimately highlights the things that matter most in people's lives and families, regardless of time and place and the passing vagaries of political regimes, social classes, and institutions.

Tudor Princess, Stewart Queen

Long ago when I was a teenager, I first developed what became a life-long interest in the ill-fated but historically decisive (if inevitably overly romanticized) life and reign of Mary, Queen of Scots. For all sorts of reasons, the Tudor period in England and the parallel events north of the border in Scotland continue to fascinate. Hence the continued output of books, movies, etc., about the Tudors and their contemporaries. Now add to that estimable collection this book by Linda Porter, The Thistle and the Rose: the Extraordinary Life of Margaret Tudor (2024), which details the life of Mary's English-born grandmother, through whose marriage the ultimate union of England and Scotland came about some 60+ years after her death.

The fundamental facts of Margaret's story are familiar to all devotees of the period. Born in 1489, Margaret was the eldest daughter of England's King Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor dynasty (having defeated the last Yorkist king, Richard III, at the Battle of Bosworth), and Elizabeth of York (daughter of England's Edward IV). Their marriage, which proved to be quite successful and loving, united the warring houses of Lancaster and York. Brought up by her loving parents in the manner of a conventional Renaissance princess, Margaret was married off, by a "Treaty of Perpetual Peace," to Scotland's King James IV in 1503. She had a happy life, in a surprisingly loving marriage, as Scotland's successful Queen Consort. The "perpetual peace," however, did not last, and soon enough war broke out again, and James IV famously died tragically, along with much of Scotland's nobility, defeated by the army of his brother-in-law England's Henry VIII, at the battle of Flodden on September 9, 1513. Margaret then served as regent for her son King James V until her ill-considered marriage to the Earl of Angus, Archibald Douglas. (Through her first marriage, she was the grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots. Through her second marriage, she became the grandmother of Mary's second husband Henry Lord Darnley. Their son, James VI, became England's King James I, when the more prolific Stewart dynasty succeeded the last Tudor monarch, Margaret's niece the childless Elizabeth, 100 years after Margaret's marriage to James IV.) After several tempestuous years of unsuccessful attempts at power and comparably unhappy marriages, Margaret died in 1541, on very good terms with her son and his wife, Mary of Guise, and on at least tolerable terms with her third husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Methven.

Such is the bare story, punctuated by aristocratic rivalries, successes and failures at holding and losing the regency, battles with her brother over her inheritance, and flights across the border, which biographer Linda Porter so effectively brings to life in her new account.

The Renaissance was, among other things, an age of powerful queens, Margaret's granddaughter Mary, Queen of Scots, her nieces, Mary 1 and Elizabeth. I of England, as well as Isabella I in Spain and the formidable Catherine de Medici, Queen Regent of France. It was also an era in which successful marriages - like those of Henry VII and Elizabeth and of James IV and Margaret - mattered a lot, as, for different reasons, comparatively unsuccessful marriages, like those of Margaret's infamous brother Henry VIII also altered English and Scottish history.

Of the two, England was always larger, richer, and more powerful than Scotland. But Porter's narrative highlights the many ways in which Scotland was at the time still quite a successful country and a factor ont he larger European stage. Among other important features, its reigning house, the House of Stewart, was long-established and recognized as legitimate, even among otherwise quarreling Scottish clans. This was in stark contrast to the novelty and dubious legitimacy of the Tudors. Hence, the Tudors'; obsessive preoccupation with the succession, in which - thanks to Margaret - the Stewarts eventually beat the Tudors.

Porter's account also highlights how public and domestic lives were intertwined in the royal courts of the period and the impact of the way royal children were raised and educated, and how Margaret's training served her well as a successful late medieval queen consort. One of the great paradoxes of Margaret's story as the widow of Flodden was her subsequently poor judgments and mistakes in her ill-advised second and third marriages, which undermined her previously powerful position. In this, she perhaps anticipated her granddaughter's even more catastrophic personal mistakes. At least Margaret was spared having to deal with the tragedy that was the Reformation, which was so central to her granddaughter's undoing. (The Reformation did not spare her completely, however, when iconoclastic Protestants desecrated her grave and destroyed her mortal remains.)

Porter has a modern appreciation of the challenges which a powerful 16th-century woman faced in politics, in what was very much a male profession. She effectively responds to some inherited images of Margaret which fail to appreciate the complexity of her situation and the comparably complex ways in which she responded both personally and politically. A modern appreciation of the dynamics of sibling rivalry likewise informs her analysis of the complex relationships between Margaret and her brother, Henry VIII. Margaret was lifelong letter-writer, and we can be grateful for the treasury of her letters - especially between her and her brother.

Finally, Porter repeatedly highlights the importance of ostentatious display and ceremony in Renaissance royal life - something that has not quite disappeared from modern politics.

Two New Young Saints

 

Before canonizing today's two new saints, Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901-1925) and Carlo Acutis (1991-2006), Pope Leo XIV described this day as "a wonderful feast for all fo Italy, for the whole Church, for the whole world."

Any canonization is a great event for the Church. What event in the Church's life is more insoiring than the celebration of the triumph of God's grace demonstrated in the lives of our brothers and sisters, now saints?  As the Church prays in the first Preface of the Saints, God is praised in the company of his saints and (citing Saint Augustine) in crowing the saints' merits, God crowns his own gifts.

The "merits" of today's two new saints speak specifically to the situation of our time and especially to the concerns of younger generations. A century ago, in an Italy which was losing its way in a fascist fantasy of pretended roman greatness, Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati (in Pope Leo's words) "encountered the Lord through school and church groups - Catholic Action, theConferences of Saint Vincent [de Paul], the FUCI (Italian Catholic University Federation), the Dominican Third Order. - and he bore witness to God with his joy of living and of being a Christian in prayer, friendship and charity. ... For him, faith was not a private devotion, but it was driven by the power of the Gospel and his membership in ecclesial associations." Likewise, at the turn of this century, Saint Carlo Acutis "grew up naturally integrating prayer, sport, study and charity  into his days as a child and young man." What life stories of sanctity could be more apt in our contemporary world of loneliness and lost sociability and false and deceptive models of leadership!