Risky Business

War is always a risky business. This is so not just in the obvious, literal sense that war risks the lives of its participants - soldiers and civilians alike. War is risky also in the broader sense that it inevitably disrupts the way things have been so far and are right now - and so renders the future that much more unpredictable. Governments and their militaries routinely make war plans, but war overwhelms routine, releases uncontrollable forces, and results in unpredictable events. 

In 1914 Europeans famously embraced war with an unexpected enthusiasm that in retrospect highlights how ignorant they were of what unexpected and uncontrollable calamities the war would bring. "A quick excursion into the realms of romance, a bold and virile adventure - that was how the ordinary man imagined war in 1914," recalled Stefan Zweig in his famous memoir, The World of Yesterday. After decades of illusory peace, perhaps our early 20th-century predecessors might be forgiven for not knowing what lay ahead, for not recognizing how unpredictably out of control their world had suddenly become. Perhaps. But, if so, what is our excuse? Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq - the most notable and prolonged wars of my lifetime - all unleashed consequences utterly unexpected and uncontrollable.

A lot of serious planning and preparation went into those "forever wars." Public support was sought domestically, and allies and coalitions were pursued internationally. Even so, those wars ended badly for us, in ways no one would have predicted at their outset.

Some wars do end well, of course, and the risks war entails may be necessary and justified. But that is an outcome that can never be taken completely for granted.  Yet, for some inexplicable reason - actually not quite so inexplicable - we tend to act as if we did not know this basic historical fact, and we instead expect to conduct our wars according to plan and to win on schedule. Again, Stefan Zweig's take on the European situation in 1914 appears perennially instructive: "How we all loved our time, a time that carried us forward on its wings; how we all loved Europe. But that overconfident faith in the future, we were sure, would avert madness at the last minute, was also our own fault. We had certainly failed to look at the writing on the wall with enough distrust."

All of which brings us to our present predicament. The constitutional imperative to consult with Congress, the political imperative to persuade public opinion in the nation and earn popular support, the diplomatic imperative to work with allies and create coalitions - none of these guarantee success, as evidenced by the unfortunate outcomes of the "forever wars" of the post-World War II world; but they do impose important restraints, without which the situation becomes even more unpredictable and uncontrollable, which is where we seem to be right now.

Revolutions almost invariably result in something way worse than what was overthrown. The great modern examples are obviously the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the 1979 Iranian Revolution. That last revolution produced a spectacularly oppressive society which (like those other revolutions) has destabilized and threatened the region around it. There is nothing good to be said about the Iranian regime, and its diminishment would likely be a great benefit to both the Middle East and the wider world. But not every evil has a ready solution. It has never been clear how to solve the many problems posed by Iran's malice and belligerence without inducing all sorts of unintended problematic consequences for Iran itself, for the region, and for the world. Presumably this is why, for 47 years, the United States has resisted the temptation to attack Iran militarily.

Speaking on foreign policy to the House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, John Quincy Adams famously said that the U.S. "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." That appears to have been a wise policy in regard to Iran these past 47 years, which it might well have been wise to continue. 

Instead - without the constitutionally required congressional consultation (let alone any congressional authorization), and without convincing the country or our allies to support the effort, and ignoring all the lessons of recent experience - the U.S. has once again gone "abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." Iran may - or, more likely, may not - be destroyed. Its power will probably be significantly diminished, which is all to the good. But what else will be destroyed or damaged in the process?

The ripple effect of this conflict on the global oil market is but one tangible example of the damage that has been done. The damage is not just higher energy prices, which. for example, in turn enriches Russia, which further advantages Russia in its aggression against Ukraine, which further threatens the rest of Europe. (One positive lesson we might take from this sobering experience would be to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Experience, however suggests we will not in fact learn that lesson, no matter how obvious it may be.)

Domestically, the war against Iran is also so wildly inconsistent not only with the wishes of most Americans but even those of at least some of the President's core "America First" supporters. Many of them can undoubtedly be counted on to revise their views so as to continue to support the President, but at least some of them seem to recognize how diametrically opposed this policy is to their expectations from the last election and are willing to express their disappointment. Meanwhile, this war further threatens our foreign alliances - already destabilized by whimsical tariffs, gratuitous insults, and the unprecedented threat to attack and annex the territory of a faithful European ally.

Moreover, because wars are such risky activities that easily unleash unexpected and uncontrollable consequences, even were the President to declare victory and turn his attention back to redecorating the White House, the world would remain seriously unsettled. The war itself could continue, for (as has been said) once one goes to war the enemy also gets a vote on its outcome. In any case, our country, our economy, our politics would all also remain unsettled, as they already have been by this risky presidential adventure.

In 1855, Britain's Queen Victoria supposedly warned King Victor Emmanuel II, the founding King of modern Italy, that kings must be sure that their wars are just, for they will have to answer for them.

Spring

 

The spring equinox occurs today at 10:46 a.m. Of course, the nights have been getting shorter and the days growing longer in the northern hemisphere for months now (since right after Christmas actually).Theoretically, they are equal in length today all over the world.

But longer days are just one aspect of spring - and by no means the most striking. After one of the coldest winters in recent years, the first change one notices is the warmer temperatures. Over a week ago already the temperatures suddenly climbed into the 70s and even hit 80 - summer-seeming days in late winter. But then it got colder again (even as the West Coast is enduring excessively high, summer-like temperatures); and, of course, the temperatures here will likely see-saw up and down between now and summer. Yet the trajectory of the mercury is unmistakable.

With warmer weather suddenly comes the rebirth of the natural world, the greening of the city that so recently was all white with a covering of snow. The truest, most telling signs of spring are, of course, the green shoots rising up out of the earth and the colorful buds suddenly appearing on the trees. Sadly, spring flowers activate allergies, but they are beautiful nonetheless. Sadly too they last only a while, as spring inevitably will give way to the enervating and oppressive heat of summer.

Seasonal changes of clothes were more important and more ritualized when I was growing up. People wore "spring coats" in the spring. But then spring seemed to last longer as a real season - not the short interval it increasingly appears to have become between the extreme cold of winter and the extreme heat of summer. That said, the green shoots rising up out of the earth and the colorful buds suddenly appearing on the trees invite us to appreciate their uniqueness, however brief.

An Italian Way of Being Human

 

Because my Sicilian-speaking maternal grandmother lived with us in our Bronx apartment until her death (when I was 19) and because my mother's brother and sisters had all been Italian-born, I was well acquainted growing up with my Italian heritage on my mother's side. In contrast, my father and his sisters, while all also children of immigrants, had all been born in New York, and my father's parents were both dead before I was born. So I knew next to nothing about that side of the family's Italian experience, only that they had all grown up in Italian Harlem. I can clearly remember, when I was very young, taking the Jerome Avenue train to 125th Street to visit the one aunt who still lived on Second Avenue and 124th Street, near the Triborough Bridge, but she too soon joined her sisters in the East Bronx, and that was the end of my acquaintance with Italian Harlem. (Before moving to the West Bronx during World War II, my mother had grown up in lower Manhattan's "Little Italy." When she met my father, that was her first awareness of Italian Harlem.)

So it was with special interest - and a desire to connect with a family past that I never fully experienced - that I finally read Robert Anthony Orsi's The Madonna of 115th Stree: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (Yale University Press, 1985). Orsi studies East Harlem's Italian immigrant community and its "popular religion," through the annual festa of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. (Although Italian Harlem was unknown to me, I was personally quite familiar with the Bronx version of that festa. La Madonna del Monte Carmelo was my mother's patronal feast, and every July 16 we went to the Italian Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Arthur Avenue, where we attended Pontifical Mass in the morning and returned for the outdoor procession - and Italian ices - in the evening. But we attended as spectators who lived a mile or more away, not as members of the local community.)

Indeed, reading Orsi's book has highlighted for me how Americanized, how assimilated, we were in our largely Irish-Catholic corner of the West Bronx, despite speaking Sicilian dialect at home with my grandmother and listening to the Italian radio station with her. Yes, we had a strong sense of family and prioritized time with my aunts, uncles, and cousins, most of whom lived nearby and whom we saw regularly - not just on holidays but on most weekends and throughout the summer vacation season, when we frequented Orchard Beach and various picnic sites. We also visited our deceased relatives in the cemetery, another important feature of the Italian-American way of maintaining traditional connections in a decreasingly traditional world. But, while we shared the extended-family centered lifestyle which Orsi describes in such detail (using the Latin word "domus") with its many life-enhancing satisfactions (and also some of its more negative repressive features), we did so as Americans, very much at home in the U.S., and feeling much less bound by old-world expectations, even while preserving and cherishing some of them.

Orsi describes a much more total society, an almost enclosed community, through various stages of its history and the challenges Italian immigrants experienced not only to maintain their distinctive traditions but to achieve respect in a sometimes very hostile American and American Catholic world. Orsi's "informants in Italian-Harlem continually made a distinction between religion and church." The immigrants' ambivalent relationship with the Church  had its origins in la miseria of the Italian mezzogiorno. But it was exacerbated by the attitudes they encountered in America, in particular "resentment by New York City's Irish Catholics, lay and clerical, of their Italian neighbors so fierce as to constitute a Catholic nativism." 

Obviously, the travails of Italian immigrants at the hands of the local Church establishment did not go unnoticed in Rome. "The American Catholic hierarchy had offended [Pope} Leo [XIII] in the early 1880s by suggesting that Italian immigrants came as pagans to the United States." Orsi suggests that the subsequent Americanism crisis was in part connected with Rome's sensitivity to the American Church's ethnic conflicts (Irish vs. German-Americans, as well as Irish vs. Italian-Americans). The American situation also served the Papacy's interests in its ongoing battle with upstart kingdom of Italy. The Pope's "concern for the immigrants provided him both with an opportunity to demonstrate that the Vatican cared about the Italian people and with a chance to embarrass the government in Rome by showing that it cared for them more than the government did."

The chapters on family life in the Italian ghetto are richly descriptive and, from today's perspective, may seem both nostalgic and challenging - for subsequent generations must inevitably miss much about the richly textured familial way of life described, but also likely experience some relief at having been liberated from its intensity by assimilation. At the same time, the Italian immigrants' sharp critique of the very different values of the surrounding society may still speak today as we struggle with a kind and degree of familial and social breakdown that it would have been very hard for our immigrants predecessors to have fully anticipated.

There is so much richness in this book, which tackles so many disparate aspects of the immigrant generation's experience and that of the subsequent generations. We read about everything from why the Italians distrusted diocesan priests, but felt more positive about religious order priests and even more so about religious Sisters. We read about their ambivalence about crime. And we get insights into the political successes and significance of famous Italian-American politicians like Fiorello LaGuardia and Vito Marcantonio.

 

In his conclusion, Orsi recognizes how "The Italians brought an ancient religious heritage to the community along the East River; and the American Catholics of the downtown Church, dazzled by the prospects of success at last in the United States and embarrassed by this Mediterranean spirituality spilling onto the streets and into the awareness of Americans, might have learned from listening to the voices of the streets."

Hollywood's Happy Night

 

Hollywood's infamous Motion Picture Academy performed its annual celebration of itself, otherwise known as the 98th Academy Awards last evening (already dark night for those of us in the Eastern Time Zone).

Going into the evening, the big question for many was whether Sinners or One Battle After Another would claim Best Picture. One Battle After Another (which I had seen) had already won top prizes from the Golden Globes, Directors Guild of America, and BAFTA. Meanwhile, Sinners (which I had not seen) was setting a new record for the most Oscar nominations in a single year. It also won the Screen Actors Guild’s Best Cast award. So - something which is not always the case - there was a really clear competition for the biggest prize. If nothing else that may have created an incentive for more viewers to watch and to put up with the inevitable interminable boredom of the show to stay up to see which movie would win. At least it did that for me.

The declining popular audience for the Academy Awards and the Academy's desperate desire for a larger global audience may be one of the factors contributing to the decision to end the Academy's 50-year relationship with ABC and depart from broadcast TV to switch to an exclusive streaming model on YouTube in 2029. Host Conan O'Brien even tried to squeeze a comic routine out of that otherwise sad fact. While he performed creditably, I was left wondering once again whether the host is really necessary and how much quality - as opposed to wasted precious time - a comic host adds to the show.

The show did seem preoccupied with ending earlier - even to the point of occasionally cutting off some of the inevitable oversharing that passes for thank yous. Overly rich, overly entitled performers and their crews and "teams" have multiple opportunities to flaunt themselves. They need not be awarded so much of the general public's time!

In relatively good taste was the Memorial to the Fallen Artists of the past year, highlighting especially Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, and Robert Redford. I appreciated Barbara Streisand's contribution about Robert Redford.

Inevitably, much of the evening played out as a competition between the two front-running movies, as each picked up its share of awards, while some others, e.g. Frankenstein did well along the way. In that department, I was really pleased to see Irish actress Jessie Buckley win for Hamnet.

Thomas Paul Anderson got to go up three times, which may have been a hint. Anyway, after hours of tedious preparation, One Battle After Another, with its superstar performances and quasi-contemporary themes, finally won Best Picture, producing applause on my part that a film I had actually seen had won for a change!

Apart from one unfortunate Free Palestine murmur, the politics of the evening was satisfactorily subdued. Jimmy Kimmel couldn't resist poking at some unnamed Voldemort and his wife. His best - and best received - such line was his probably his taking aim at CBS, lumped into the same category as North Korea.

All in all - for all its over-written length, its unflattering acts of self-promotion, its tiresome commercials for Rolexes and pharmaceuticals, and some seriously poor outfit choices - it proved to be a surprisingly good show - unexpectedly fit for purpose within the constraints of broadcast TV. I guess that Hegel's owl of Minerva is once again taking flight at dusk!

And the Oscar Goes To

 

Obviously, I have no idea which actors or what movies this year's Oscars will go to. Not only do I lack the requisite prophetic powers of prediction to pronounce to whom or to what the Oscars will go, I do not even know enough about most of the nominated movies and actors to guess to whom or what the Oscars should go. So far, i have only seen three of the Best Picture nominees - One Battle After Another, Hamnet, and Train Dreams (that last one not even in a theater, but streaming on Netflix). Both One Battle After Another and Hamnet, in my modest opinion, deserve the honor, as do the actors that star in them. But that is just my opinion and is offered largely in ignorance of the other films they are competing against, films I have not seen and likely will not see.

I guess that says something about me at this stage in my life. I used to see many more movies, and in the past I usually managd to see all the Best Picture nominees. Maybe it also says something about the changing dynamics of the film industry. I am not the only one who doesn't see so many movies anymore. When I do, in addition to the interminable trailers one has to sit through, the experience is further undermined by having to endure a commercial trying to sell me on the moviegoing experience itself. Of course, at that point I am already there, which makes me feel like the proverbial congregation being lectured by the preacher who is complaining about those who aren't attending Mass! More seriously, I guess that says something - something worrisome - about the perilous state of the film industry, which seems not to have recovered from the catastrophic consequences of the pandemic.

I commented on One Battle After Another on this site on October 1, 2025, and on Hamnet on December 27. At a friend's recommendation, I just recently watched Train Dreams at home on Netflix. The grand vistas of forests and trees so central to the film suggest I might well have done better to have seen it on a bigger screen. Even so, the beauty and the power of the film came across strongly - as well as the intense sadness of the story. Beyond the personal travails of its main character, there is also implicit in the story a saga of social and cultural loss - the loss of a certain way of life, the loss of simplicity and harmony with nature, the loss of a certain kind of American individualism that valued the good in others and sought to live in harmony with others, despite ethnic and other differences. It celebrates an older and simpler society - while recognizing its injustices and fundamental harshness.

I doubt Train Dreams will win Best Picture. Of the three I have seen, I would have to bet on One Battle After Another, whose actors also deserve awards - despite the reservation I expressed then and have expressed since, that right now this country could probably do without yet another film celebrating political violence!

Then again, I have not seen the other nominated films. So any guesses i am making are just that - ill-informed guesses! What will actually happen, we will just have to see.

House Divided

 

Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house (Luke 11:17).

When Abraham Lincoln famously quoted these words of Jesus, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, on June 16, 1858, he was a senatorial candidate, his presidency and the civil war which characterized it then still in the future. When Lincoln quoted Jesus, everyone in his audience would have recognized the words and understood the reference.  Biblical literacy has declined enormously since then. So some may think Lincoln's words were original. Indeed, given the precipitous decline in historical literacy in recent decades, many may not recognize the quote or associate it with Lincoln at all, let alone with Jesus.

What Jesus said was supposed to be seen as self-evident. Division undercuts the unity necessary for a successful state - whether in a kingdom or nation or in a household.  The kingdom of God, of course, cannot suffer division. Jesus even goes so far as to warn us: Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. But earthly realities remain prone to division, as we all know. 

Theoretically, our connection with the Kingdom of God should bring us together and create an overarching unity that transcends and subordinates all out human divisions. But, again as we all know too well, such spiritual unity still eludes us. Lincoln had something to say about that too. In his Second Inaugural Address in March 1865, reflecting on four years of civil war, Lincoln famously said: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. ... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully."

In our own day, we seem to be divided as we have not been since Lincoln's time. We hear how families have been fractured and friendships forever ended because of political disagreements. And not only has our common communion in Christ not healed those division, those very divisions have penetrated into the life of the Church, so much so that for many Americans religious allegiances are reflections of - and even determined - by political allegiances, instead of the other way around.

We are accustomed to refer to Lent as a time of grace and reconciliation. That is a lot harder than it sounds. We all know - perhaps from personal experience - how hard it can be to reconcile quarrelling friends or jealous siblings, let alone unite a politically polarized nation or heal a divided Church. But such is the challenge of being Christ's Church today.

Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house (Luke 11:17).

Homily for the Thursday of the Third Week of Lent, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, March 12, 2026.

Communication Without Community

 

Byung-Chul Han is a Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Berlin's University of the Arts. His The Disappearance of Rituals: A Typology of the Present, tr. Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2020) is a short but complex critique of our contemporary "symbol-poor," neoliberal, narcissistic, commodified, consumerist culture. For Han, "rituals serve as a background against which our present times may be seen to stand ot more clearly." For Han, "rituals are symbolic acts," that "bring forth a community without communication," in contrast to which today "communication without community prevails." Rituals "stabilize life," through "their self-sameness, their repetitiveness." Rituals "bring people together and create an alliance, a wholeness, a community."

Han is particularly critical of the contemporary cult of authenticity., which he calls a "compulsion" which "leads to narcissistic introspection, a permanent occupation with one's own psychology." When "ritual gestures and manners decay, affect and emotion gain the upper hand." Hence, "narcissistic disorders are on the rise because we are increasingly losing the ability to conduct social interactions outside the boundaries of the self."

Rituals are not exclusively or uniquely religious, but religious rituals and their heightened form in religious festivals have obviously been a prominent part of human ritual experience. He examines, for example, the religious institution of the Sabbath; "when we subordinate rest to work, we ignore the divine." The silence of the Sabbath "gives rise to listening. It is accompanied by a special receptivity, by a deep contemplative attentiveness. Today's compulsion of communication means that we can close neither our eyes nor our mouths. It desecrates life." Unlike traditional religious festivals, "today's popular festivals have become mass events, and masses are not communities." he contrasts capitalism with religion. "Money, by itself, has an individualizing and isolating effect. It increases my individual freedom by liberating me from any personal bond with others."

Han challenges the prevailing conceit that modernity has been liberatory. Sketching what he calls a "genealogy" of rituals' disappearance, he pointedly interpret that disappearance as not "an emancipatory process." Our impolite society, it appears, has become a brutalized one. Han is hardly the first critic to make this case, although he does so in a very distinctive manner. His claims are quite sweeping, especially given the shortness of the book. Nor is it completely clear how, if at all, we can emerge from our present malaise. He explicitly eschews nostalgia and introduces his book by saying  it "is not animated by a return to ritual." yet obviously he is somehow trying to point the way toward the recovery of a shared dwelling in our divided world.

Fascism - Then and Now

 

When Robert O. Paxton, Mellon Professor Emeritus of Social Science at Columbia University, first published The Anatomy of Fascism (Random House, 2004, Vintage Books, 2005), it was a definitive historical study of what he called "the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain." A definitive historical study of a distinctly 20th-century phenomenon it still is, of course, but 20+ years on it also speaks presciently to troubling contemporary political movements and events.

For Paxton, fascism is "the most important political novelty of the twentieth century: a popular movement against the Left and against liberal individualism. Contemplating fascism we see most clearly how the twentieth century contrasted with the nineteenth, and what the twenty-first century must avoid." Paxton clearly distinguishes fascism from conservatism and conservative authoritarianism. Thus, for example, he finds little or no fascism in Franco's Spain. (Both "Franco and Salazar reduced fascist parties to powerlessness.") On the other hand, he emphasizes the importance of conservative collaboration with historical fascism. "Fascist movements could never grow without the help of ordinary people, even conventionally good people. Fascists could never attain power without the acquiescence or even active assent of the traditional elites ... The excesses of fascism in power also required wide complicity among members of the establishment." That combination of anti-liberal populism and elite establishment acquiescence seems again relevant in our contemporary context.

Historical fascism in 1920s Italy and 1930s Germany was related to the liberal political order's inability to deal adequately with the challenges of the post World War I world. Perhaps, we can see some similar parallels today in the apparent collapse of the traditional liberal politics in the post-Cold War, post-9/11, post-financial collapse era.

Rather than articulate an abstract definition of fascism, Paxton focuses on what historical fascists actually did - "a succession of processes and choices: seeking a following, forming alliances, bidding for power, then exercising it."

Examining historical fascism in interwar Italy and Germany, he. highlights how World War I "discredited optimistic and progressive views of the future, and cast doubt upon liberal assumptions about natural human harmony. Socially, it spawned armies of restless veterans (and their younger brothers) looking for ways to express their anger and disillusion without heed for old-fashioned law or morality." This is not 1920s Italy, but we too live in a society which has increasingly rejected progressive illusions and from which young men especially are increasingly alienated and nihilistic. All this is combined again with a distinctly problematic expression of resurgent nationalism. "Fascisms seek out in each national culture those themes that are best capable of mobilizing a mass movement of regeneration, unification, and purity, directed against liberal individualism and constitutionalism and against Leftist class struggle." Fascism involves "a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history."

Fascism presupposes the mass politics of the 20th century. Looking for 19th-century precursors, however, he identifies interestingly the American Ku Klux Klan as "the earliest phenomenon that can be functionally related to fascism" and "a remarkable preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe." He finds it unsurprising "that the most precocious democracies - the United States and France - should have geneerated precocious backlashes against democracy."

Italian and German fascisms contended successfully in the political arena. They offered "a new political style that would attract voters who had concluded that 'politics' had become dirty and futile." Doesn't that sound familiar? "When a constitutional system seizes up in deadlock and democratic institutions cease to function, the 'political arena' tends to narrow."

Mussolini famously lacked any actual program and adapted as opportunity presented, changing his tune to ally eventually with the Church and the monarchy. Both he and Hitler came to power by legitimate constitutional means. Neither formally abolished "the normative state" (and in Mussolini's case the state was still sufficiently strong to bring  him down in the end).

While charismatic leadership is not limited to fascism, it appears that fascism requires it. That dependence on charisma "may help explain why no fascist regime has so far managed to pass power to a successor." Without necessarily pushing the analogy too far, something similar still seems to be the case.

Mussolini's compromises with traditional elites and the Church made his regime increasingly appear more authoritarian than fascist. Hence his need for a war of aggression. "War provided fascism's clearest radicalizing impulse... both Hitler and Mussolini deliberately chose war as a necessary step in realizing the full potential of their regimes."

Paxton considers the "inoculation of most Europeans against traditional fascism by its public shaming in 1945" to be "inherently temporary." Future fascism "- an emergency response to some still unimagined crisis - need not resemble classical fascism perfectly in its outward signs and symbols." He imagines an "authentically popular American fascism would be pious, antiblack, and, since September 11, 2001, anti-Islamic as well." Also the collapse of the Soviet Union has left "the radical Right" with "no serious rivals as the mouthpiece for the angry 'losers' of the new post-industrial, globalized, multiethnic Europe" - and we might add the U.S. Armed with "reassuring language and symbols and in the event of some redoubtable setback to national prestige, Americans. might support an enterprise of forcible national regeneration, unification, and purification. Its targets would be the First Amendment, separation of Church and State ... efforts to place controls on gun ownership, desecrations of the flag, unassimilated minorities, artistic license, dissident and unusual behavior of all sorts that coudl be labeled antinational or decadent."

As "ominous warning signals," Paxton identifies "situations of political deadlock in the face of crisis, threatened conservatives looking for tougher allies, ready to give up due process and the rule of law, seeking mass support by nationalist and racialist demagoguery." 

Remember, Paxton anticipated all this over 20 years ago!

Only at the end, does Paxton finally formulate this working definition of fascism:

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

On Purim

 

By coincidence of calendars on this Lenten weekday, our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate the holiday known as Purim. (The sequence of events in John’s Gospel suggests that the healing of the disabled man at the pool of Bethsaida might have taken place at Purim.) The story of Purim is found in the biblical book of Esther, which tells how the exiled Jewish community living in Persia was threatened with genocide and then saved through the intervention of Esther the secretly Jewish Queen of the Persian king. The infamous villain of the story was Haman, sort of the Prime Minister, who hated the Jews because one of the Jewish leaders Mordecai had refused to bow to him. Mordecai was Esther’s uncle and went to her and told her, “Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for such a time as this?” Esther fasted and prayed and then courageously went to the king and eventually exposed Haman’s plot, saving the Jewish people from Haman’s malice.

Purim has a special salience this year. It occurs at a time of increasing antisemitism all over the world, across the political spectrum on both left and right. Secondly, it occurs at a time when we find ourselves engaged in an undeclared and unpredictable war with the modern successor state to the ancient Persian Empire, ruled by a contemporary version of a Haman-like government. These considerations contribute a certain added seriousness to what in contemporary Judaism is normally actually a very happy, very festive, fun-filled holiday.

But these are serious times. Regarding the war, we can only hope and pray that our national leaders and the leaders of the nations of the Middle East will find a way to work through this latest crisis to afflict that perennially fractured and troubled part of the world. As regards antisemitism, we need to remind ourselves of the explicit teaching of the Second Vatican Council that “God holds the Jews most dear … [and] does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues,” and that “the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews … decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone” [Nostra Aetate, 5]

Homily for the Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent (Purim), St. Paul the Apostle Church, NY, March 3, 2026.

Photo: Dutch Painting, The Feast of Esther (c. 1625), by Jan Lievens (1607-1674).

Mountaintop Faith

 

It is more than 30 years now since I had the thrilling experience of reaching the Church of the Transfiguration at the top of Mount Tabor after a high-speed taxi ride up the narrow mountain road. I remember it well. So did Peter, James, and John [Matthew 17:1-9]. They didn’t take a taxi, of course, but they had an even much more memorable experience. Hence Peter’s spontaneous reaction, “Lord, it is good that we are here.”

What exactly did they see? Jesus, we’re told, was transfigured before them. What is that supposed to mean? The only time we usually hear the word transfigured used is in relation to this event, when Jesus’ face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. Whatever that looked like, Peter, James, and John were being treated to nothing less than an experience of God’s glory, a peak into another world, a glimpse of Jesus’ divine nature as Son of God and his fulfillment of the Old Testament (represented on the mountain by Moses and Elijah).

No wonder Peter wanted to stay there as long as possible – even to make three tents there, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah – as if this were not just the beginning – an invitation to join Jesus on his journey.

An ancient tradition dates the Transfiguration 40 days before the Crucifixion. In the actual gospel narrative, however, the time-reference first points back to Peter’s profession of faith and Jesus’ first prediction of his impending passion, six days previously.  The unusually explicit time-reference makes it clear that the two events (in both of which Peter plays a prominent part) are connected. In both events, there is the revelation of who Jesus ultimately is and reference forward to his impending death and resurrection. And in both Peter is the spokesman for the others, the one most intimately associated with Jesus but who, in the moment, seems somehow to miss the point.

Paralleling Peter, this morning, is the figure of Abraham, who makes his first appearance on the world stage in today’s first reading [Genesis 22:1-4a]. Until Abraham, human history had been one sinful calamity, one tragic debacle after another – Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the Flood, and finally the complete collapse of community and breakdown of human society at the Tower of Babel.

Then suddenly God intervened in history in a new and wonderful way – singling out one specific individual, and through him one particular family and eventually one specially chosen nation – to be his human partner, in repairing the massive damage we have done to God’s good creation. God and Abraham – and Abraham’s descendants – will collaborate together and so become a blessing for the whole world.

Abraham is considered the common spiritual ancestor of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In all three religions, Abraham is revered for his faith. By which we mean what exactly?

Abraham’s faith summoned him - at an age when most of us are already retired – to go forth to a new land. Abraham’s assignment was exciting, I suppose, but full of generalities and less certain on specifics.  Abraham responded to the ambiguous and complicated events in his life in a way that somehow reflected his sense of God’s presence and action in those ambiguous and complicated events. His faith meant total trust in and reliance on God through whatever changes might be required and whatever challenges might have to be met.

Change is always challenging, which is why try to avoid it as much as possible. Still, sometimes change is necessary, and therein lies the challenge – first to know when, and then to know how. It may mean abandoning the familiar for the frightening. It may mean something totally new. Sometimes, it may mean undoing bad decisions and recent choices in order to return to a lost or forgotten or abandoned older and wiser path.

We all talk at times about making necessary changes in our lives. But we are just as likely to conclude that we have too much at stake to change course.

Lent is our annual opportunity to let Abraham demonstrate the power of faith to overcome our cynicism, despair, defeatism, and spiritual inertia.

That this is possible is, of course, all because of Abraham’s greatest descendent, Jesus, who fulfilled in life and death his nation’s destiny and so made Abraham’s blessing fully available to the entire world.

Even so, our temptation will always be to do the opposite and to think, like Peter, that we are there already - without having to make the journey. But the same God who first called and challenged – and blessed – Abraham also continues to invite us, through Jesus, instructing us as he instructed Peter: "This is my beloved Son … listen to him."

 

Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, March 1, 2026.

 

Saint Augustine of Africa

 

Everyone who knows about Saint Augustine (354-4300 presumably knows that he was African, which is to say that he was born in Roman North Africa and, after a relatively short sojourn in Italy, returned to live the rest of his life and his ministry as bishop in Roman North Africa. The Roman province of Africa corresponded to the territory south of the Mediterranean, north of the Sahara, and west of Egypt (i.e, much of modern Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco). That said, most know Augustine as the great Latin-speaking, Latin-writing, late Roman Doctor of the Church, whose contribution was and remains fundamental to the development and character of western, Latin, European theology and ecclesiology, both Catholic and mainline Protestant. Without negating any of that, Catherine Conybeare (Leslie Clark Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Greek, Latin and Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr College) seeks to balance Augustine's acknowledged Romanness by lifting up his admittedly familiar but much less familiar Africanness in Augustine the African (Liveright, 2025).

Augustine was born in Thagaste (Souk Ahras, Algeria), studied in Carthage (Tunisia), and served as priest and bishop in Hippo (Annaba, Algeria), which Pope Leo XIV - himself a Friar of the order of Saint Augustine - plans to visit later this year. Conybeare effectively portrays those ancient cities and the wider panorama of busy, diverse, and often violent Roman North Africa. Conybeare takes seriously those places and their complex Roman-African culture and the impact of those places on Augustine, as a native son of Africa who was therefore both a Roman insider (by education and formation) and an outsider (by geography and accent). "In the Roman Empire, social advancement hung on how you spoke and which region of the empire you came from, not what you looked like."

Conybeare first leads her readers through the familiar story of Augustine's early life as recounted in his Confessions, highlighting those aspects of his early life and education (e.g., his emotional identification with Dido in the Aeneid) that reveal his cultural Africanness. The second section of the book covers the Donatist conflict and Augustine's strong identification with the universal Church in opposition to the schismatic local Donatist Church, which the author (somewhat distractingly) insists on calling "the African Church." The third section offers interesting insights into the challenges Augustine experienced preaching to congregations in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual (Latin and Punic) society, simultaneously composed of diverse social classes. As Augustine himself wrote, in one of the letters Conybeare quotes, "I don't know where on earth we could find to live," without acknowledging our differences. The fourth and final section focuses on Augustine's reaction to the trauma of 410, culminating in The City of God, and his great final controversy, his defense of God's grace against the heresy of Pelagianism. Conybeare highlights how Augustine personal experiences with Roman politics. in Africa contributed to his famously extensive theology of history. "The hard lesson that he continued to learn as he grew ever closer to people with real political power was the fact that peace could not be an abstract thing. It was a complicated equilibrium held in balance by flawed human beings, and it could waver at any moment."

The book's Epilogue ends with Conybeare's travel to Pavia, where Saint Augustine's body was reburied early in the eighth century (a pilgrimage I have myself regretted never having made). She seems to regret how his final resting place reflects "the appropriation of Augustine to a European tradition that he had profoundly influenced, to be sure, but that was only ever partly his own." I find that final observation strangely sad, since it ignores what makes Augustine most lastingly important for us, his total transformation into a saint of the universal Church.

The Blizzard of 26

 

According to the forecasts, this weekend's snowstorm was anticipated to be the biggest, most dramatically impactful storm to hit the New York City area in ten years, since the historic blizzard of January 2016, which dropped a record of 27.5 inches in New York's Central Park. That record has not been surpassed. TIn 30 hours of snowfall, this blizzard dropped only 19.7 inches in Central Park!

That was enough to give city public school students a real snow day - their first since 2019, ever since remote learning (or non-learning) became the fad. It was also enough to make it illegal to drive in the city from 9:00 p.m Sunday through noon Monday. I usually appreciate the quiet and darkness during my early morning "contemplative" hour, but the absence of almost any external activity at all early Monday morning presaged an especially tranquil day.

Which is what a snow day ought to be! it is an arrogant contemporary conceit of our soulless modernity that work must always continue no matter what else is going on around us. For those lucky enough to have heated homes and food and modern media luxuries, it was a truly tranquil day.

The State of the Union Is Not Good

 

In his January 15, 1975, State of the Union address (photo), President Gerald Ford famously declared, "the state of the union is not good". That was 51 years ago - in a very different century in a very different America with a very different kind of president. A lot has happened in between, but the state of the union is again not good, whatever our president may choose to tell Congress and the country on Tuesday..

Donald Trump is by far the least ideological president in my lifetime. Tariffs seem to be among his few strongly held personal beliefs. They have also been central to his second-term domestic agenda, along mass deportations of immigrants. Tariffs, the White House has variously argued, could help rebuild lost American industries, reduce prices for consumers, lower the national debt, and even (a la the 19th century) replace income taxes with tariffs filling the gap in revenue.

Major American companies declined to challenge Trump's tariffs in court. So it fell to smaller businesses, in Learning Resources v. Trump, to argue that Trump’s tariffs went beyond what the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) authorized. That law allows a president to "regulate" imports during a national emergency but makes no specific reference to tariffs. From 1977 untill Trump, no president has attempted to levy tariffs by invoking IEEPA.

In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts held that Trump had exceeded his powers under IEEPA and "must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.” Trump reacted typically, telling reporters, “They’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.” In fact, it was a rare rebuke from the Court to a president who has often appeared to be governing as some unaccountable monarch, who needs to be reminded that we have a constitution and that the congress, not the president, is the constitutional organ entitled to impose taxes and raise revenue through tariffs. The Congress can, of course, continue its modern tradition of irresponsibility and delegate tariff-imposing power to the president, but the point of Learning Resources v. Trump is that Congress thus far has not done so, at least not in the manner the president has claimed.

Congress, in fact, has not done much of anything lately. Far from acting like the first and only legislative branch of our federal government and thus a check on a president's authoritarian aspirations, it has both actively and passively empowered this administration to arrogate additional power to itself. 

Perhaps the voters might not mind if the results were lower prices and an overall sense of national well-being. But Trump's tariffs have had the opposite effect. Likewise, his war against immigrants has escalated into a war on American cities and American citizens. And, while it is not uncommon for lame-duck presidents to focus on foreign policy (where a president's opportunities to be effective may often be greater), this is obviously not what Trump's 2024 voters wanted.

Undoubtedly, the President will tell the Congress and the country that the state of the union is good. But, unlike when he tries to tell us grandiose things about himself, what he is claiming about the country is being contradicted by voters' direct experience. Trump might be better served by some of Gerald Ford's humility. But Gerald Ford he is not. And humble he most certainly is not.

The Epstein Class

The recent shocking arrest in Britain of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly HRH Prince Andrew, the 12th Duke of York) illustrates the increasingly serious after-effects of the international scandal surrounding the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. (The charge against Andrew is "Misconduct in Public Office" and refers to alleged official misconduct while Andrew was a UK Trade Representative from 2001 to 2011, allegations based presumably on revelations derived from the recently released Epstein files.) The arrest of the former prince demonstrates how seriously Epstein-related scandalous misbehaviors are being taken in the UK and elsewhere in Europe (e.g., France, Norway).

At the same time, this event also highlights how the opposite seems to be the case in the US at present. While some public figures have suffered loss of reputation, and some have stepped back from certain public positions, this has all happened in the private sector. So far, no American (other than the late Epstein himself) has been held to account in any legal process. Indeed, no American seems to have suffered anything comparable to the  public scrutiny suffered by three British citizens (Ghislaine Maxwell, Peter Mandelson, and Andrew) implicated in various ways in this scandal. (All three, it should be noted, deny any wrongdoing. Maxwell was convicted by a US Court in 2021. Neither Peter Mandelson nor Prince Andrew has been tried for - let alone convicted of - anything, and so both retain a legal presumption of innocence.)

What this obviously highlights is precisely what the contemporary populist critique has long claimed - that there is, in this supposedly anti-aristocratic democratic country of ours, a largely unaccountable elite defined by wealth and cultural power, who hang out with one another, enjoying the myriad benefits that flow from such oligarchic and meritocratic connections,  and go about their amazingly privileged lives with little no public accountability. This suggests a system of shameless apparent contempt for ordinary Americans, who are typically subject to a very different set of standards when it comes to responsibility for one's behavior. It is not just that the very rich may be able to buy themselves out of legal and other troubles. That is bad enough. Rather it highlights a whole alternative culture of meritocratic oligarchy which seems literally to live in a different system from the rest of us. This is the so-called "Epstein Class."

The MAGA movement achieved prominence in part because of conspiracy theories which referenced the Epstein affair. Prior to his reelection in 2024, candidate Trump apparently expressed openness to releasing all the relevant Epstein information. Many of his supporters expected this to happen, and the reactions of the likes of congressman Thomas Massie and ex-congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene reflect their apparent disappointment with how this has been handled since. 

What this sordid affair exposes about the unaccountability of some very wealthy and powerful people is bad enough. The account also highlights how strangely vacuous the lives of many of the rich and famous now appear to be. In what kind of a world would a married Ivy League University president and former Cabinet member, pursuing a relationship with someone who considered him her mentor, seek relationship advice from the likes of Jeffrey Epstein? In what kind of a world would a future Cabinet secretary, having claimed to have previously cut off all ties with Epstein, be shown instead to have visited his private island with his wife, children, and nannies? In what kind of a world would supposedly smart, accomplished people be so attracted to - even seemingly besotted by - the likes of Jeffrey Epstein? What does that all say about the corrupting character of wealth and privilege?

In the 13th century, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) discussing the religious practice of evangelical poverty, noted that wealth poses three obstacles to virtue. They are "the anxiety which often accompanies wealth," second, "love of wealth, which increases with the possession of wealth," and, third, "vainglory or conceit, which is a product of wealth." [Cf. Summa Theologiae II.II, q. 188, a. 7].

Along with the depravity of possibly actionable crimes and many victims' damaged lives, the Epstein files have revealed a long-standing sickness which deeply infects our society, that very "vainglory," which Saint Thomas so rightly recognized as "a product of wealth."

Photo: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, younger brother of Britain’s King Charles III, leaves Aylsham Police Station on Thursday night. (Phil Noble/Reuters)

Lent

 

There is no island, no continent, no city or nation, no distant corner of the globe, where the proclamation of Lenten Fast is not listened to. Armies on the march and travelers on the road, sailors as well as merchants, all alike hear the announcement and receive it with joy. Let no one then separate himself from the number of those fasting, in which every race of humankind, every period of life, every class of society is included.

So said Saint Basil the Great (330-379) preaching about the arrival of Lent in the 4th century. The triumphalist universality of Basil's account obviously no longer describes our contemporary reality in our more globalized and hence more multi-culturally conscious world. It barely even describes what is left of Lent in what remains of the Christian world. But Lent (or, at least, Ash Wednesday) remains one of the most recognized and observed occasions in the Christian calendar, even in our supposedly secularized society.

While Lent (or, at least Ash Wednesday) remains immensely popular, the question remains, why Lent?  There are many pious practices associated with Lent - notably fasting, prayer, and acts of charity. These, of course, are meant as means to an end. Lent and its traditional practices are our means of deepening our relationship with God and consciously and deliberately re-orienting all aspects of our lives accordingly. Our Lenten fasting, our increased prayer, our acts of individual and collective charity all express God's grace at work with in us and open us to ever more grace, to the fullness of life that is our destiny, as we seek through our actions here and now to become the persons we shall be for all eternity.

Lent has its origins in the final preparation of catechumens for baptism and membership in the Church and of penitents for reconciliation with God and the Church. Even prior to the modern 20th-century restoration of the catechumenate, the Lenten liturgy reflected both of these themes, as it continues to do. During Lent, we identify with the catechumens in their journey of conversion and express it in our own individual and communal journey of reconciliation with God and with one another.

Lent, as Pope Leo has written in his first lenten message, "is a time in which the Church, guided by a sense of maternal care, invites us to place the mystery of God back in the center of our lives, in order to find renewal in our faith and keep our hearts from being consumed by the anxieties and distractions of daily life. "

We live in a therapeutic age which prizes comfort and feeling good about ourselves. Yet surprisingly Ash Wednesday - with its sobering message of the reality of human limits and its solemn challenge to repent - somehow still cuts through the poisonous political platitudes and psychobabble of our self-affirmational age to speak spiritual truth against the powerful lies that envelope us.

 

Every Lent, the Church invites us to break our routine and do something we usually seem somewhat reluctant to do – to take an honest and critical look at ourselves - at where we are, where we are going, where we would like to be going, and how we hope to get there. Lent, as Pope Leo has suggested, "means allowing ourselves to be challenged by reality and recognizing what truly guides our desires — both within our ecclesial communities and as regards humanity’s thirst for justice and reconciliation."